our excellent elders.
Alack that it were not so! for I am assured your scholarship should have
been rare, and your attention thereto of the closest."

_Nell_ kept her countenance (which was more than _Ned_ or _Milly_ could
do), and thanked _Mynheer_ right well, ensuring him that she should
essay to make herself worthy of the great honour of coming of _Dutch_
parentage.

Saith _Father_ drily, "There is time yet, _Mynheer_."

"For what?" saith he. "To learn Mistress _Helena_ the _Latin_?
Excellent Sir, you rejoice me. When shall we begin, Mistress
_Helena_?--this morrow?"

_Helen_ laughed now, and quoth she,--"I thank you much, _Mynheer_,
though I am 'feared you reckon mine understanding higher than it
demerit: yet I fear there shall scantly be opportunity this morrow. I
have divers dishes to cook that shall be cold for this even, and a deal
of flannel-work to do."

"Ah, the dishes and the flannel, they are mine abhorrence!" saith
_Mynheer_. "They stand alway in the road of the learning."

"Nay, mine old _paedagogus_!" crieth _Ned_. "I reckon the dishes are
little your abhorrence at supper-time, nor the flannel of a cold night,
when it taketh the form of blankets. 'Tis right well to uphold the
learning, yet without _Nell's_ cates and flannel, your _Latin_ should
come ill off."

"The body is ever in the way of the soul!" saith _Mynheer_. "Were we
souls without bodies, what need had we of the puddings and the
flannels?"

"Or the _Latin_," sticketh in _Ned_, mischievously.

_Mynheer_ wagged his head at _Ned_.

"_Edward Van Louvaine_, thou wist better."

"Few folks but know better than they do, _Mynheer_," saith _Ned_. "Yet
think you there shall be lexicons needed to talk with King _David_ or
the Apostle _Paul_ hereafter?"

"I trow not," saith _Father_.

"Dear heart, Master _Stuyvesant_," cries Cousin _Bess_, "but sure the
curse of _Babel_ was an ill thing all o'er! You would seem to count it
had a silver side to it."

"It had a golden side, my mistress," made he answer. "Had all men ever
spoken but one tongue, the _paedagogus_ should scarce be needed, and
half the delights of learning had disappeared from the earth."

"Eh, lack-a-day!--but how different can folks look at matters!" saith
Cousin _Bess_. "Why, I have alway thought it should be a rare jolly
thing when all strange tongues were done away (as I reckon they shall
hereafter), and all folks spake but plain _English_."

"Art so sure it