"Turn out! turn out!" he said to the women who lay there, and having
undressed himself lay down to snore in that five time's paid for
sleeping-place. It must have been somewhat of a comfort--if, indeed,
comfort was to be found in anything that night--that the captain did not
long enjoy his slumbers. A fierce gale began to blow, and during the
furious storm that never abated for many an hour to come, the captain
had to remain, drenched to the skin, on deck, working and directing with
all his might, in order to save his ship. They never saw him again until
they landed at the Brill. That night the two girls set out on foot to
tramp the weary miles to Rotterdam, a gentleman refugee from Scotland,
who had come over in the same boat, acting as their escort. The stormy
weather of the North Sea had followed them to land. It was a cold, wet,
dirty night, and Julian Home, still frail from illness, soon lost her
shoes in the mud. There was but one solution to the difficulty. The
gentleman shouldered their baggage along with his own; Grisell
shouldered her sister, and carried her all the rest of those weary
miles. At Rotterdam they found Sir Patrick Home and his eldest son
awaiting them, to take them on to their new home in Utrecht, and wet and
cold and tiredness were all forgotten at the sight of those dear faces,
and Grisell "felt nothing but happiness and contentment."
For three years and a half they lived in Utrecht, and once again during
that time Grisell voyaged to Scotland to see to her father's business
affairs. It is difficult to discover what, during the rest of that time,
she did not do for her parents and family. There were many Scottish
refugees then in Holland, and the Homes kept open house, and spent
nearly a fourth part of their income on a mansion sufficiently
commodious to allow of their hospitalities. This made it impossible for
them to keep any servant save a little girl who washed the dishes, and
consequently Grisell acted as cook, housekeeper, housemaid, washerwoman,
laundress, dressmaker, and tailoress. Twice a week she sat up at night
to do the family accounts. Daily she rose before six, went to the market
and to the mill to see their own corn ground, and--in the words of her
daughter, who proudly tells the tale--"dressed the linen, cleaned the
house, made ready the dinner, mended the children's stockings and other
clothes, made what she could for them, and in short did everything." She
was very musical and loved playing and singing, but when, for a small
sum, a harpsichord was bought, it was her younger sister, Christian, who
was the performer, and by it "diverted" her parents, and the girls had
many a joke over their different occupations. Yet even with all her
other work she found time to take an occasional lesson in French and
Dutch from her father along with the younger ones, and even wrote a book
of songs--many of them half written, broken off in the middle of a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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