Garlands of Gold Read Online Free PDF

conceit about my looks and so that reason doesn’t apply to me in any way. I know she is often sharp-tongued, but it must be some other matter that makes her lose patience with me. My mother was beautiful and she never said that Vrouw Gibbons was difficult with her.’
    ‘That’s because they were the same age and in any case Bessie Gibbons was just as lovely when she was younger.’
    ‘With my creams and lotions I make her look beautiful all the time,’ Saskia exclaimed in exasperation, sitting down and taking up her sewing. ‘Even her teeth are much whiter since I made up that new dentifrice for her with the crushed rosemary to use twice daily. What’s more, she does exactly as I have told her in rinsing afterwards with pure conduit water or white wine. She prefers the wine.’ She sat back in her chair. ‘So nobody would notice me in her shade if I were ever present at the soirées and parties that she and Heer Gibbons give so frequently. As for her son, I don’t want him!’
    The nurse chuckled. ‘Wait till you see Grinling. He’s a fine young man and not only talented with his wood carving, but in the sphere of music too. He plays several musical instruments and has a splendid singing voice, which you are sure to hear. But be wise and remember to keep away.’
    ‘I will,’ Saskia replied emphatically and put an end to that line of the conversation by looking across at what the nurse was sewing. ‘That is not the cap you are making for me. Is mine nearly finished?’
    The old woman gave a nod. ‘Yes, you should have had it for your sixteenth natal day, but that date has come and gone, so now it will have to be a gift from St Nicholaes.’
    ‘Oh, must I wait until the sixth day of December?’ Saskia protested in amusement, knowing she was being teased. ‘That is still three weeks away!’
    Nanny Bobbins’ eyes twinkled. ‘Maybe I will reconsider. Who can tell?’
    Two days later excitement rippled through the house as Heer and Vrouw Gibbons received a letter from their son that had been sent from the Italian border. It meant that allowing for the length of time it had taken to reach them he and his companions could be expected very shortly. Yet when he and his fellow travellers arrived home there was nobody to greet him, his father being at the Gibbons warehouse and his mother visiting a sick friend. Only Saskia, halfway down the stairs to the reception hall, witnessed their noisy arrival, which coincided with the first snowfall of winter.
    They had flung the door open from the street in a blast of cold air. Snowflakes whirled about them as they came clomping into the house in their fashionable bucket-topped boots, taking no heed of the spotless floor in the pleasure of their arrival. Laughing and shouting, scarlet and purple plumes fluttering on their wide-brimmed black hats, they swirled off their cloaks, seeming to fill the whole generous space of the reception hall. Grinling was nineteen years old, his friend a year older, but with the experience of travel on them they would no longer be the same youths who had left Rotterdam some months ago. In their wake came the tutor, a tired look on his face and with a wearied stance, but he was already giving directions to the porters carrying in the first of several large travelling boxes.
    ‘Where is everybody?’ one of the young men shouted with all the authority of belonging there before happening to glance up and catch sight of Saskia standing motionless on the stairs. She was without a cap, being on her way down to try on the new one that Nanny Bobbins had ready for her. She was unaware that a hanging lamp, which had been lit to counteract the dullness of the day, was illumining her seductive, chisel-cheeked beauty and making a red-gold harvest of her hair against the shadows of the stairs. Long lashes deepened the shade of her alert green eyes.
    ‘Your parents are out, mijnheer ,’ she said, amazed to feel her heart lift joyously as she looked down