Chapter 19

Skipper Garvloit, into whose family Elizabeth had come, occupied one of
the many-storeyed houses, with green window-shutters, narrow
entrance-doors, and polished brass knockers, after the usual Dutch
fashion, in the lively street leading down to the dock in Amsterdam,
with the canal on the other side, with its various bridges, and vessels
and barges of all kinds unlading, running up from it into the heart of
the town.

Madam Garvloit had four young children, and was not very strong, so that
Elizabeth's robust, healthy nature had been a perfect godsend to her in
the house, and she was content to overlook her occasional shortcomings
of manner or temper in consideration of the assistance which she
rendered in every department of the housekeeping.

Elizabeth had always had a pretty strong will of her own; and here,
where she virtually had the control of everything, her tendency to
self-assertion had been considerably developed. The force and decision
with which she gave her opinion about everything seemed to Madam
Garvloit sometimes (although she said nothing) rather like a reversing
of their relative positions; and on days when she was in a captious
humour--and those were her days of most feverish activity--she would
even go so far as to set aside her mistress's orders altogether. In a
general way her moods were very uncertain: one day she would be in
tearing spirits, racing up and down the stairs with the children, as if
she had been inhaling the wild air of Torungen again; and another she
would be so pensive and taciturn that they thought she must be pining
after home.

She had many admirers, both among young and old, her gay moods
attracting the former, and her serious ones the latter. Among the former
were two young gentlemen acquaintances of the house, relatives of
Garvloit--one a smart young clerk from one of the larger counting-houses
in the town, who rather affected the gentleman; and the other a
light-haired, pink-complexioned, skipper's son from Vlieland. They both
came regularly every Sunday, were frantically jealous of one another,
tried to outbid each other whenever an opportunity offered, and were
both fully convinced that they sighed in vain. She was so different,
they felt, from the other specimens of femininity of their acquaintance
to whom their weak attentions had sometimes proved acceptable. There was
something almost imperious in Elizabeth's manner at times that made them
feel quite small beside her; and however careless she might be of the
_convenances_ in her way of speaking to them, they had very soon found
that wherever she chose to draw the line, so far could they go and no
farther.

Madame Garvloit would take her to task sometimes for the scant courtesy
with