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 of an Illinois prairie farmhouse would not have been eccentric merely, but mad, even if there had been an available kettle of hot water at 6.30, which there emphatically was not. Selina was grateful for an occasional steaming basin of water at night and a hurried piecemeal bath by the mythical heat of the drum.

“Maartje!” roared a voice from belowstairs. The voice of the hungry male. There was wafted up, too, a faint smell of scorching. Then came sounds of a bumping and thumping along the narrow stairway.

“Og heden!” cried Maartje, in a panic, her hands high in air. She was off, sweeping the two pigtails with her in her flight. There were sounds of scuffing on the stairway, and Maartje’s voice calling something that sounded like hookendunk to Selina. But she decided that that couldn’t be. The bumping now sounded along the passage outside her room. Selina turned from her satchel to behold a gnome in the doorway. Below, she saw a pair of bow-legs; above, her own little hide-bound trunk; between, a broad face, a grizzled beard, a lack-lustre eye in a weather-beaten countenance.

“Jakob Hoogendunk,” the gnome announced, briefly, peering up at her from beneath the trunk balanced on his back.

Selina laughed delightedly. “Not really! Do come in. This is a good place, don’t you think? Along the wall? Mr.—Mr. Hoogendunk?”

Jakob Hoogendunk grunted and plodded across the room, the trunk lurching perilously above his bow-