Page:The black tulip (IA 10892334.2209.emory.edu).pdf/125

 She returned in the evening. She had preserved the note.

Thus it went on for fifteen days, at first to the disappointment, and then to the great grief of Van Baerle. On the sixteenth day, at last, she came back without it.

Van Baerle had addressed it to his nurse, the old Frisian woman; and implored any charitable soul who might find it, to convey it to her as safely and speedily as possible.

In this letter there was a little note inclosed for Rosa.

Van Baerle’s nurse had received the letter in the following way.

Leaving Dort, Mynheer Isaac Boxtel had abandoned not only his house, his servant, his observatory, and his telescope, but also his pigeons.

The servant having been left without wages, first lived on his little savings, and then on his master’s pigeons.

Seeing this, the pigeons emigrated from the roof of Isaac Boxtel to that of Cornelius Van Baerle.

The nurse was a kind-hearted woman, who could not live without having something to love. She conceived an affection for the pigeons which had thrown themselves on her hospitality; and when Boxtel’s servant reclaimed them with culinary intentions, having eaten the first fifteen already, and now wishing to eat the other fifteen, she offered to buy them from him, for a consideration of six stivers per head.

This being just double their value, the man was very glad to close the bargain, and the nurse found herself in undisputed possession of the pigeons of her master’s envious neighbour.

The note, as we have said, had reached Van Baerle’s nurse.