Julia bought her cakes, and went about the town feeling as holiday-like as the gayest peasant there, although she had no wonderful holiday head-dress of starched lace and gold plates.  She did not see any one she knew, except old Marthe, Herr Van de Greutz’s housekeeper.  She had met the old woman several times when she was marketing, and was on speaking terms with her now, so she had to stop and listen to her troubles.  They were only the same old tale; her newest young cook had left suddenly, and she had come to the town to see if she could get another from among the girls who had come in for the fair.  She had no success at all, and was setting out for home, despondent, and not at all comforted to think that she would have to trudge in and try all over again the day after to-morrow.  To-morrow, itself, the great day, it was no good trying; no girl would pay attention to business then.

In the evening Julia went again into the town, but this time with Mijnheer and Joost, and dressed in her best dress.  It was not at all a new dress, nor at all a grand one, but it was well chosen, well made and well fitted, and certainly very well put on; the gloves and hat, too, accorded with it, and she herself was in a humour of gaiety that bordered on brilliancy.  Was she not going to have a holiday to-morrow, and was she not going to spend it in company with a man she liked, and in despite of Dutch propriety, which would certainly have been thoroughly and outrageously shocked thereby?  Denah knew nothing of the causes at work, but she was not slow to discern the result when she and her father and sister met the Van Heigen party that evening.  She smoothed the bow at the neck of her best dress, and looked at her gloves discontentedly; she did not altogether admire Julia’s clothes, they were not at all Dutch; but she had an intuitive idea that they came nearer to Paris, the sartorial ideal of the nations, than her own did.  She looked suspiciously at the English girl, her eyes were shining and sparkling like stars; they were full of alert interest and half-suppressed mischief.  She looked at everything, and overlooked nothing, though she was talking to Mijnheer in a soft, purring voice, that was full of fun and wickedness.  Now she turned to Joost, and her voice took another tone; she was teasing him, making fun of him in a way that Denah decided was scandalous, although his father was there, aiding and abetting her.  Joost did not seem to resent it a bit; he listened quite serenely, and even turned a look on her as one who has another and private interpretation of the words.  Anna saw nothing of this; she only thought Julia very nice, and her dress pretty, and her talk gay.  But Denah, though not always so acute, was in love, and she saw a good deal, and treasured it up for use when the occasion should offer.