When they entered the dining-room there was an old gentleman present--a fiery professor of some kind, who was sipping his bouillon, and contradicting Miss Alida with an apparently equal satisfaction. She seemed to be enjoying his unconventional manner. "Professor," she was saying as they entered, "you seize every opportunity to lecture the universe. Will you regard my adopted children? They are Mr. Antony and Miss Adriana Van Hoosen--cousins, sir, and a little more than cousinly." He bowed to the young people, smiled, nodded, and then said brusquely to Miss Alida: "Dutch, too, I perceive." "Pure Dutch, Professor. Look at them. They may be descendants of John de Bakker, or of Madame Wendelmost Klaas; or they may be of the same blood as the Cromelins, Laboucheres, and Van Overzees, for aught even your wisdom can tell. For the race is pure on their side." "And all is race. There is no other truth; because it includes all others. I admire the Dutch, madame; and I am lost in wonder when I consider Holland." "You may well be that, Professor," cried Miss Alida, as she lifted daintily for him a Joseph-portion of the tempting salad, "for the sublime thing about Hollanders is that they have created a country for themselves. If you had ever stood on the town house of Leyden----" "I have stood there." "And what did you see?" "I saw streets, where there was once the open sea. I saw cornfields, where fish had once been caught. I saw an orchard, where there had once been an oyster-bed. I saw a fair province, covered with a web of silvery waters." "And yet they say that Dutchmen are prosaic and phlegmatic! Holland is in itself a poem!" "Yes," said Adriana, "for some poet must have seen beneath the salt waves the land flowing with milk and bristling with barley." "And then," added Miss Alida, all aglow with enthusiasm--"and then came the heroes! and they dived into the turbid waters and brought the vision to the light of day." "Very good!" said the Professor; "but what I like about the Hollanders is their religion. Holland was nothing till all of a sudden the Gospel made it sublime. The Hollanders knew the worth of their souls. In their politics, they thought of eternity--a thing statesmen do not usually take into account; and seeking first the kingdom of heaven, they struck such bold strokes for freedom as would make common heroes falter." "Yes," answered Miss Alida, "the Dutch are a religious people, but they have always hated religious rituals. You could not get Antony and Adriana Van Hoosen, after all their American generations, to take an interest in church millinery and such trivialities." "Race! race! my dear madam. The Dutch do not comprehend the truths hidden in symbols--that is all." "But why," asked Antony, "should we have symbols when we may have realities?" "Why? why? Always why! I think I will write a grand treatise on the Martyrs and Heroes of Holland."