"We _are_ cousins, or rather we have always considered ourselves such, but the relationship is not very close. Our grandmothers were half-sisters. _My_ side of the family is entirely English, while his is entirely Dutch. Old Great-grandfather Poot married twice, you see, and I am a descendant of his English wife. I like Jacob, though, better than half of my English cousins put together. He is the truest-hearted, best-natured boy I ever knew. Strange as you may think it, my father became accidentally acquainted with Jacob's father while on a business visit to Rotterdam. They soon talked over their relationship--in French, by the way--and they have corresponded in that language ever since. Queer things come about in this world. My sister Jenny would open her eyes at some of Aunt Poot's ways. Aunt is a thorough lady, but so different from mother--and the house, too, and furniture, and way of living, everything is different." "Of course," assented Lambert, complacently, as if to say, "you could scarcely expect such general perfection anywhere else than in Holland," "but you will have all the more to tell Jenny when you go back." "Yes, indeed. I can say one thing--if cleanliness is, as they claim, next to godliness, Broek is safe. It is the cleanest place I ever saw in my life. Why, my Aunt Poot, rich as she is, scrubs half the time, and her house looks as if it were varnished all over. I wrote to mother yesterday that I could see my double always with me, feet to feet, in the polished floor of the dining-room." "Your _double_! that word puzzles me; what do you mean?" "Oh, my reflection, my apparition. Ben Dobbs number two." "Ah, I see," exclaimed Van Mounen. "Have you ever been in your Aunt Poot's grand parlor?" Ben laughed. "Only once, and that was on the day of my arrival. Jacob says I shall have no chance of entering it again until the time of his sister Kenau's wedding, the week after Christmas. Father has consented that I shall remain to witness the great event. Every Saturday Aunt Poot, and her fat Kate, go into that parlor and sweep, and polish, and scrub; then it is darkened and closed until Saturday comes again; not a soul enters it in the meantime; but the _schoonmaken_, as she calls it, must be done, just the same." "That is nothing. Every parlor in Broek meets with the same treatment," said Lambert. "What do you think of these moving figures in her neighbor's garden?" "Oh, they're well enough; the swans must seem really alive gliding about the pond in summer; but that nodding Mandarin in the corner, under the chestnut trees, is ridiculous, only fit for children to laugh at. And then the stiff garden patches, and the trees all trimmed and painted. Excuse me, Van Mounen, but I shall never learn to admire Dutch taste."