or, The Silver Skates 127

she could bewitch sensible, honest-minded lads like Lambert
van Mounen and Ludwig van Holp!

Carl was too much like her, within, to be an earnest admirer ;
and perhaps he suspected the clouds. He, being deep and surly,
and always uncomfortably in earnest, of course preferred
the lively Katrinka, whose nature was made of a hundred tink-
ling bells. She was a coquette in her infancy, a coquette in
her childhood, and now a coquette in her school-days. Without
a thought of harm, she coquetted with her studies, her duties,
even her little troubles. They shouldn’t know when they
bothered her, not they. She coquetted with her mother, her
pet lamb, her baby brother, even with her own golden curls,
tossing them back as if she despised them. Every one liked
her; but who could love her? She was never in earnest. A
pleasant face, a pleasant heart, a pleasant manner, — these only
satisfy for an hour. Poor, happy Katrinka! Such as she tinkle,
tinkle, so merrily through their early days. But life is so apt to
coquet with them, in turn, to put all their sweet bells out of
tune, or to silence them one by one!

How different were the homes of these three girls from the
tumbling old cottage where Gretel dwelt! Rychie lived in a
beautiful house near Amsterdam, where the carved sideboards
were laden with services of silver and gold, and where silken
tapestries hung in folds from ceiling to floor.

Hilda’s father owned the largest mansion in Broek. - Its
glittering roof of polished tiles, and its boarded front, painted
in half a dozen various colors, were the admiration of the
neighborhood.

Katrinka’s home, not a mile distant, was the finest of Dutch
country-seats. The garden was so stiffly laid out in little paths
and patches that the birds might have mistaken it for a great