256 Hans Brinker

.

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 new-
comers. Indeed, he was not upon the canal at all. She had
not been near Broek before, since the Eve of St. 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, or some of her family, 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 some one 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 dread-
ful thing it must be to have a dull father! I should be
wofully 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 among the peasantry of the neighbor-

hood. As it was, Annie Bouman was the only one who did
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