“She had better sleep in the guest room,” he said, thoughtfully, regardless of the cold which struck to his slippered feet from the marble floor. “That is the only room which does not contain specimens that would probably frighten the poor child. I am very much afraid, Koosje,” he concluded, doubtfully, “that she is a lady; and what we are to do with a lady I can’t think.” With that the old gentleman shuffled off to his cosey room, and Koosje turned back to her kitchen. “He’ll never think of marrying her,” mused Koosje, rather blankly. If she had spoken the thoughts to the professor himself, she would have received a very emphatic assurance that, much as the study of osteology and the Stradivari had blinded him to the affairs of this workaday world, he was not yet so thoroughly foolish as to join his fossilised wisdom to the ignorance of a child of sixteen or seventeen. However, on the morrow matters assumed a somewhat different aspect. Gertrude van Floote proved to be not exactly a gentlewoman. It is true that her father had been a well-to-do man for his station in life, and had very much spoiled and indulged his one motherless child. Yet her education was so slight that she could do little more than read and write, besides speaking a little English, which she had picked up from the yachtsmen frequenting her native town. The professor found she had been but a distant relative of the Mevrouw Baake, to seek whom she had come to Utrecht, and that she had no kinsfolk upon whom she could depend--a fact which accounted for the profusion of her jewellery, all her golden trinkets having descended to her as heirlooms. “I can be your servant, mynheer,” she suggested. “Indeed, I am a very useful girl, as you will find if you will but try me.” Now, as a rule, the professor vigorously set his face against admitting young servants into his house. They broke his china, they disarranged his bones, they meddled with his papers, and made general havoc. So, in truth, he was not very willing to have Gertrude van Floote as a permanent member of his household, and he said so. But Koosje had taken a fancy to the girl; and having an eye to her own departure at no very distant date,--for she had been betrothed more than two years,--she pleaded so hard to keep her, promising to train her in all the professor’s ways, to teach her the value of old china and osteologic specimens, that eventually, with a good deal of grumbling, the old gentleman gave way, and, being a wise as well as an old gentleman, went back to his studies, dismissing Koosje and the girl alike from his thoughts. Just at first Truide, poor child, was charmed. She put away her splendid ornaments, and some lilac frocks and black skirts were purchased for her. Her box, which she had left at the station, supplied all that was necessary for Sunday.