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"From Beijerland, mynheer," she answered, with a sob. "So! Koosje, she is remarkably well dressed, is she not?" the professor said, glancing at the costly lace head-gear, the heavy gold head-piece, which lay on the table together with the great gold spiral ornaments and filigree pendants a dazzling head of richness.
"You are quite right, professor," returned Koosje, curtly; she was sensible even in her trouble. "And what is the trouble?" he asked, gently. "It's just this, professor," cried Koosje, setting her arms akimbo and speaking in a high-pitched, shrill voice; "you and I have been warming a viper in our bosoms, and, viper-like, she has turned round and bitten me." "Is it Truide?"
Our heaviest afflictions are often, nay, most times, Koosje, means to some great end which, while the cloud of adversity hangs over us, we are unable to discern." "Ah!" sniffed Koosje, scornfully. "Yes, that is true," said Koosje, passing the back of her hand across her trembling lips.
"I shall let him marry her," replied Koosje, with a portentous nod. The old gentleman couldn't help laughing. "You think he will pay off your old scores?" "Before long," answered Koosje, grimly, "she will find him out as I have done."
There was a new race of neat maids, clad in the same neat livery of lilac and black, who scoured and cleaned, just as Koosje and Dortje had done in the old professor's day. You might, indeed, have heard the selfsame names resounding through the echoing rooms: "Koos-je! Dort-je!" But the Koosje and Dortje were not the same.
Many an offer had been made to her, it is true; but she had always declared that she had had enough of lovers she had found out their real value. I must tell you that at the time of Jan's infidelity, after the first flush of rage was over, Koosje disdained to show any sign of grief or regret.
Servants in the Netherlands, I hear, are not so good but that they might be better; and most people knew what a treasure Professor van Dijck had in his Koosje. However, as the professor conscientiously raised her wages from time to time, Koosje never thought of leaving him. But there is one bribe no woman can resist the bribe that is offered by love.
There was a dead-and-gone romance which had broken his heart, sentimentally speaking a romance long since crumbled into dust, which had sent him for comfort into the study of osteology and the music of the Stradivari; yet the memory thereof made him considerably more lenient to Koosje's weakness than Koosje herself had ever expected to find him.
The professor looked up in mild astonishment, quickly enough changed to dismay as he caught sight of his valued Koosje's face, from out of which anger seemed in a moment to have thrust all the bright, comely beauty. "How now, my good Koosje?" said the old gentleman. "Is aught amiss?"
She was very proud, this Netherland servant-maid, far too proud to let those by whom she was surrounded imagine she was wearing the willow for the faithless Jan; and when Dortje, on the day of the wedding, remarked that for her part she had always considered Koosje remarkably cool on the subject of matrimony, Koosje with a careless out-turning of her hands, palms uppermost, answered that she was right.
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