380 Hans Brinker

manner of nation was his mother? If she’d been an Amer-
ican, he’d certain have had high cheek-bones and reddish skin ;
if a German, he would have known the language, and Squire
Smith declared he didn’t; if French (and his having that
frog-pond made it seem likely), it would come out in his
speech. No, there was nothing he could be but Dutch. And,
strangest of all, though the man always pricked up his ears
when you talked of Holland, he didn’t seem to know the first
thing about the country when you put him to the point.

Anyhow, as no letters ever came to him from his mother’s
family in Holland, and as nobody living had ever seen old
Higgs, the family couldn’t be anything much. Probably
Thomas Higgs himself was no better than he should be, for all
he pretended to carry himself so straight; and, for their parts,
the gossips declared they were not going to trouble their heads
about him. Consequently Thomas Higgs and his affairs were
never-failing subjects of discussion.

Picture, then, the consternation among all the good people,
when it was announced by “somebody who was there, and
ought to know,” that the post-boy had that very morning
handed Higgs a foreign-looking letter; and the man had
“turned as white as the wall, rushed to his factory, talked a
bit with one of the head-workmen, and, without bidding a
creature good-bye, was off bag and baggage before you could
wink, ma’am.” Mistress Scrubbs, his landlady, was in deep
affliction. The dear soul became quite out of breath while
speaking of him. “To leave lodgin’s in that suddent way,
without never so much as a day’s warnin’, which was what
every woman who didn’t wish to be trodden under foot (which,
thank Hevving! wasn’t her way) had a perfect right to expect,
— yes, and a week’s warnin’, now you mention it; and with-