astically performed, to the sore dismay of their
quiet-loving countrymen.

Therefore, their arrival at Amsterdam created a great sensation,
especially among the small boys on the wharf.

The Y was crossed. They were on the Broek canal.

Lambert's home was reached first.

"Good-bye, boys!" he cried as he left them. "We've had the greatest
frolic ever known in Holland."

"So we have. Good-bye, Van Mounen!" answered the boys.

"Good-bye!"

Peter hailed him. "I say, Van Mounen, the classes begin tomorrow!"

"I know it. Our holiday is over. Good-bye, again."

"Good-bye!"

Broek came in sight. Such meetings! Katrinka was upon the canal! Carl
was delighted. Hilda was there! Peter felt rested in an instant. Rychie
was there! Ludwig and Jacob nearly knocked each other over in their
eagerness to shake hands with her.

Dutch girls are modest and generally quiet, but they have very glad
eyes. For a few moments it was hard to decide whether Hilda, Rychie, or
Katrinka felt the most happy.

Annie Bouman was also on the canal, looking even prettier than the other
maidens in her graceful peasant's costume. But she did not mingle with
Rychie's party; neither did she look unusually happy.

The one she liked most to see was not among the newcomers. Indeed, he
was not upon the canal at all. She had not been near Broek before, since
the Eve of Saint Nicholas, for she was staying with her sick grandmother
in Amsterdam and had been granted a brief resting spell, as the
grandmother called it, because she had been such a faithful little nurse
night and day.

Annie had devoted her resting-spell to skating with all her might toward
Broek and back again, in the hope of meeting her mother on the canal,
or, it might be, Gretel Brinker. Not one of them had she seen, and she
must hurry back without even catching a glimpse of her mother's cottage,
for the poor helpless grandmother, she knew, was by this time moaning
for someone to turn her upon her cot.

Where can Gretel be? thought Annie as she flew over the ice; she can
almost always steal a few moments from her work at this time of day.
Poor Gretel! What a dreadful thing it must be to have a dull father! I
should be woefully afraid of him, I know--so strong, and yet so strange!

Annie had not heard of his illness. Dame Brinker and her affairs
received but little notice from the people of the place.

If Gretel had not been known as a goose girl, she might have had more
friends am