weary hours when I cannot see
you. I confess to you I have very little hope for the latter one, and
I look beforehand on this unfortunate bulb as sacrificed to my
selfishness. However, the sun sometimes visits me. I will, besides, try
to convert everything into an artificial help, even the heat and the
ashes of my pipe, and lastly, we, or rather you, will keep in reserve
the third sucker as our last resource, in case our first two experiments
should prove a failure. In this manner, my dear Rosa, it is impossible
that we should not succeed in gaining the hundred thousand guilders
for your marriage portion; and how dearly shall we enjoy that supreme
happiness of seeing our work brought to a successful issue!"

"I know it all now," said Rosa. "I will bring you the soil to-morrow,
and you will choose it for your bulb and for mine. As to that in which
yours is to grow, I shall have several journeys to convey it to you, as
I cannot bring much at a time."

"There is no hurry for it, dear Rosa; our tulips need not be put into
the ground for a month at least. So you see we have plenty of time
before us. Only I hope that, in planting your bulb, you will strictly
follow all my instructions."

"I promise you I will."

"And when you have once planted it, you will communicate to me all
the circumstances which may interest our nursling; such as change of
weather, footprints on the walks, or footprints in the borders. You will
listen at night whether our garden is not resorted to by cats. A couple
of those untoward animals laid waste two of my borders at Dort."

"I will listen."

"On moonlight nights have you ever looked at your garden, my dear
child?"

"The window of my sleeping-room overlooks it."

"Well, on moonlight nights you will observe whether any rats come out
from the holes in the wall. The rats are most mischievous by their
gnawing everything; and I have heard unfortunate tulip-growers complain
most bitterly of Noah for having put a couple of rats in the ark."

"I will observe, and if there are cats or rats----"

"You will apprise me of it,--that's right. And, moreover," Van Baerle,
having become mistrustful in his captivity, continued, "there is an
animal much more to be feared than even the cat or the rat."

"What animal?"

"Man. You comprehend, my dear Rosa, a man may steal a guilder, and risk
the prison for such a trifle, and, consequently, it is much more likely
that some one might steal a hundred thousa