My aunt Gretchen is just reaching her thirty-fourth birthday. She confesses to her age. If she did not come from Amsterdam she ought to have been born there. She has blossomed like a flower among the tulips, and she looks like a Rubens, in that painter's more sober style, as in the portrait of the Friesland woman, with the prim pink and white flesh of the healthful natures of the North. You realise that good blood flows quietly and temperately beneath the pleasantly plump charms of this worthy Dutchwoman, who claims only her due, but is desirous of getting it. And she does get it. She has luxuriant light chestnut hair, and a very attractive face with the smiling, placid, and even somewhat simple expression of a good housewife, who is as expert in bringing up her children as in making pastry and pineapple jam. Being of a gay and amiable disposition, she greeted her husband with the ordinary, hearty affection of a woman who has never been a widow. After bringing him his foxskin cap she established him in a comfortable arm-chair, and then mixed his absinthe for him. I guessed that the captain was returning to old habits, with the dignified composure which he displays in everything. They began to talk in Dutch, and as I looked at them without understanding it, my uncle said to me: "Your aunt tells me that her kitchen range is too small to make any good _souffles_, and it worries her on your account." "Oh! my aunt is too kind to disturb herself about such a trifling matter," I replied; "the pleasure I feel in seeing her again amply compensates me for this slight mishap." "Well, instead of the _souffles_ you shall have some _wafelen_ and some _poffertjes_!" quickly rejoined my aunt with her kindly smile. I remarked that she spoke French much better than formerly. However, probably on account of her voyages with the captain, who recruited his crews at Toulon, her Dutch accent has now become a Provencal one. The dinner was delightful, substantial and plentiful, like the charms of my aunt, who was victorious along the whole line, and notably with the spicy sauce of a _gebakken schol_, which was excellently baked. The conversation was simple and of a free and easy character, my uncle talking with all the freedom of a man who has a quiet conscience. He was as much at his ease in his Dutch household as any good citizen could be, and I perceived that my aunt knew absolutely nothing about him, unless it were the important position that he occupied in the spice trade. She gave him some news about the great doings of the Van Hutten firm of Rotterdam and Antwerp, in which he seemed to take a particular interest. It seems, too, that Peter van Schloss, junior, is married to a young lady of Dordrecht, who presented him with twins after six months of matrimony, a circumstance which my uncle found very natural. Old Joshua Schlittermans, having been utterly ruined by the failure of Gannton Brothers of New York, has now taken to drink.