windows, as though the architects and builders had conspired to
produce something artistic and refused to design one long monotonous
gable-line. But the new street--it was about twenty years old--had
nevertheless retained the Dutch trimness that characterizes the
dwellings of the better classes: the well-scrubbed pavements ran into
the distance, growing ever narrower to the eye, with their grey hem of
kerb-stone, their regularly-recurring lamp-posts; in the middle of the
street was a plantation: oval grass-plots surrounded by low railings, in
which were chestnut-trees, neatly pruned, and, beneath them, a neat
shrubbery of dwarf firs. The fronts of the houses glistened with
cleanliness after the spring cleaning; the tidily-laid bricks displayed
their rectangular outlines clearly, even at a distance; the
window-frames were bright with fresh paint, dazzling cream-colour or
pale brown; the blinds, neatly lowered in front of the shining
plate-glass windows, were let down in each house precisely the same
depth, as though mathematically measured; and the houses concealed their
inner lives very quietly behind the straight, nicely-balanced lace
curtains. And this was very characteristic, that above each gable there
jutted a flagstaff, held aslant with iron pins, the staff painted a
bright red, white and blue--the national colours--as though wound about
with ribbons, with a freshly-gilded knob at the top. All those
flagstaffs--a forest of staffs, with their iron pins, for ever aslant on
the gables--waited patiently to hoist their colours, to wave their
bunting, twice a year, for the Queen and her mother, the Regent.

Marietje looked out. It was May; and the chestnuts in the grass-plots
tried to outstretch and unfurl their soft, pale-green fans, now folded
and bent back against their stalks. But a mad wind whirled through the
street, which was like a courtyard of opulence, and the wind scourged
the still furled chestnut-fans. The girl looked at them compassionately
as they were whipped to and fro by the wind, the eager young leaves
which, full of vernal life and pride of youth, were trying hard to
unfold. The tender leaves were full of hope, because yesterday the sun
had shone, after the rain, out of a flood-swept sky; and they thought
that their leafy days were beginning, their life of leaves budding out
from stalk and twig. They did not know that the wind was always at work,
lashing, as with angry scourges, with stinging whips; t