The boat did not go fast that June day; indeed, once afloat in her, it was possible to realise at what a really superior speed Amsterdam had been approached on the great canal. It was also now possible to think of that canal as “great.” It was very great in comparison to this one. But even at this rate of progress Haarlem was left behind before very long, and on either side was green country. A very straight white road ran by the canal on one side. It was by this on his bicycle den Heer Karel would have gone to the bulb garden had he been alone. A remark on the subject drew from him the assurance that it was much cooler to go this way, and that the glaring white dust of the road often hurt his eyes. The which, with its dwelling on the one point of the journey agreeable to him, seems more really graceful than an assurance of delight in it; this even if he had not added, “besides, then I should not have had company, and now I have, which is pleasant.” There is a certain sincere politeness among the Dutch, which is attractive in its simplicity, and at its best recalls the Quakers.
I have been told that the village to which I went that day is surprisingly wicked. The same has been told of every village, except one, with which I have come in contact in England. Possibly, usually, with some truth, though the surprise may have lain more in the nature of the surprisee—it is hard not to think of picturesque cottages and green fields as Gardens of Eden—than in the outrageous iniquity of the villagers. Certainly den Heer Karel was no connoisseur of wickedness in any of its branches; he would be likely to find surprising most varieties that came to his notice among the village people whom he individually knew. His uncle, who was the pastor of the village, was of something the same sort, though, so the nephew said, he did not know half the bad things which were done there. The which was easy to believe when one met the pastor, a white-haired old man, whose hopeful eyes saw always the best in human nature, and whose unconscious saintship inevitably drew out the best, so that the most unrighteous, from shame or from sympathy, made efforts to be righteous in his company.
In the gardens, which were reached at the end of this leisurely voyage, ranunculi were in bloom—a flower not often to be met in quantity in England, where it is not popular. Why, is not clear, certainly one might have thought it old-fashioned enough to have returned to favour with straight-backed chairs and china dogs and cottage ornaments. The more admired anemones were nearly over that day, only a few crimson and purple flowers remained, so wide open that their black centres were all revealed. They still stood stiff and straight on their stalks, not bending to every breeze, like the ranunculi, which were a mass of dancing rosettes, scarlet for the most part, though at the far corner of the field there was a narrow strip of ivory-white ones, a beautiful colour contrast.