Heins knew that Fransje's presence did not usually cheer Christian's spirits, but quite the reverse. He remembered also that Fransje never could sit beside the invalid for half an hour together, unless there was some one present to admire her assiduity; while Gertrude, who said nothing about the pleasure, had frequently held the boy in her arms for hours during his agony, and kept her seat through a long summer's day when Christian could not, with all his endeavours, keep his temper with anybody else. Heins smiled vaguely, however, upon Fransje's protestations: and when talk of business was resumed, her fancy wandered on into the days when she might enact the applauded sister-in-law, in return for the desirable establishment she should have obtained as the lady of the rising merchant, Heins Snoek. "You remember," said Jakob, "the fine vein of turf that runs from the dyke at Winkel to the lake twenty miles inland. I have often said, as I suppose many others have, that it is a shame that vein is not worked." Heins had heard that there were many doubts whether it would be worth while to excavate this turf till labour should be cheaper in the north, and more fuel required for the increasing population. Slyk, however, had an answer to every objection. "If it was merely to dig up a single cargo of turf," said he, "I grant you it would not be worth while to transport labourers from the South. But mine is a very extensive plan indeed. In the first place, this turf lies only two feet below the surface, and it is seven feet deep. It will be some time before we exhaust such a vein, twenty miles in length. O, I assure you, the breaks are nothing; merely caused by the intersecting dykes. We have only to cross over, and begin again at the distance of a few feet.--Permission! can you suppose we shall be refused permission to improve the land as we proceed, to the great advantage of the owners? Yes; to their great advantage; as you will say when you have heard the whole of my scheme. We shall not make a swamp of the excavation. No, no. We will leave the honour of making inland lakes to our ancestors. I do not wonder that you take fright at the idea of a new lake, twenty miles long. I mean, instead of a lake, to have a fat green meadow, stretching from Winkel to nearly the opposite coast."