early flower came creeping out. Yonder, in the dark-blue wood, patches of
brown and of pale colour stood out clearly, with a whole variety of vivid
hues. And it had all come so unexpectedly, all of a sudden, as though, by
some magic of the night, it was all set forth to adorn and grace a great
festival.

In the fields, the folk were hard at work. The land was turned up and
torn and broken by the gleaming plough and lay steaming in purple clods
in the sun's life-giving rays. Everything swarmed with life and movement.
The houses were done up and coated with fresh whitewash, the shutters
painted green, till it all shouted from afar in a glad mosaic, with the
blue of the sky and the young leafage of the trees, under the brown,
moss-grown roofs.

And the days crept on, each counted and marked off: so many white stripes
on the rafters and black stripes on the almanack; they fell away one by
one and the Saturday came, the long-expected eve of the great Sunday.
Quite early, before sunrise, the linen hung outside, the white smocks and
shirts waving, like fluttering pennons, from the clothes-lines in the
white orchard. Horieneke also was up betimes and helping mother in her
work. From top to bottom everything had to be altered and done over again
and cleansed. It was only with difficulty that she got to school. The
last time! To-day, the great examination of conscience, the general
confession and the communion-practice; and, to-night, everything to be
laid out ready for to-morrow morning: all this kept running anyhow
through her head and among the lines of her lesson-book.

Half-way through the morning they went to church. The children there all
looked so glad, so happy and so clean and neat in their second-best
clothes and so nicely washed. They now made their confessions for the