The next day no Lyntje. This was extremely grave, and their anxiety was at its height. The basket maker was on the point of going out of the city (which he had not done for perhaps twenty years) to the village where Lyntje lived. He would have executed this design if his wife had not observed to him, that he would gravely compromise the soles of his shoes. This judicious remark caused him to postpone his excursion until the next day. The next morning a countryman came to inform them of the death of Lyntje. The poor girl had been taken ill and died the same night. Before dying, she had remembered her friends in the city, and had expressed the desire that some one would carry them the fatal news. The basket maker and his wife, smitten in their dearest affection, wishing to do something for the repose of her soul, formed the resolution that they would never again use milk! II Several weeks had passed since the death of the generous milk girl, and her old friends had not been able to recover the calm of their former life. They seemed on the contrary to become more melancholy as the days and weeks wore on after that unfortunate event. Instead of taking the air upon their doorsteps and conversing with their neighbours, as they had been in the habit of doing, they never sat there now, and had become nearly invisible. They went regularly every morning to the cathedral, where as exemplary Christians, they attended the first mass. Then they had such a depressed air, the expression of their faces showed a grief so bitter, that not an inhabitant of the market dared to speak to them. When, however, one bolder than the others ventured to question them, he obtained only a few syllables in response. The neighbours, who all felt a great sympathy for them, would have been glad to console them. They did not know what to think of such singular conduct, so contrary to all their habits. "I cannot believe that grief alone, for a friend like Lyntje, could affect them to such a point," said Mynheer Schuermans, the plumber, one day to his friend, Mynheer Dorekens, the baker upon the corner, who in the morning came to chat with one or the other of his neighbours while his last oven of bread was baking. "It is true that they lost something," responded he, "because my wife says so, and she is incapable of telling a falsehood. You know, neighbour, Mother Dewis had more milk for her _liard_ than we for two." "And have you noticed," said the wife of Schuermans, joining in the conversation held before her door, "that Dewis completely neglects his business? Only yesterday he forgot to put out his baskets when he returned from the cathedral. They have not opened their door during the day. It is thirty years since we have lived upon the market, and I cannot remember such a thing to have happened. If it had rained--but such superb weather. Is their business in a bad state? I do not think so. He has money." "What can it be?" said all three.