the pan, the roast and the vegetables. The stove roared softly; and on
the flat pipe stood earthen and iron pots and pans simmering and fretting
and sending up clouds of steam to the rafters. Amidst it all, mother
hurried to and fro in her heavy wooden shoes. Her body still waggled in
her wide jacket and blue petticoat. Her face shone with grease and
perspiration. She puffed and sighed in the intolerable heat. The blue
chequered cloth lay spread on the table; and all around were the plates
with the freshly tinned spoons and forks and little beer-glasses.[8]
Outside, the boys sat in the top of the walnut-tree, waiting and peering
for any one coming. Father had taken off his blue smock and turned up his
shirt-sleeves and now went to see to his birds. That was his great hobby
and his work on Sunday every week. All the walls were hung with cages: in
that big one were two canaries, pairing; in the next, a hen-canary
sitting on her eggs; and in a little wire castle lived a linnet and a
cock-canary and three speckled youngsters. The finches were in a long row
of darkened cages and moulting-boxes. When he put out his hands, the
whole pack started singing and whistling; they sprang and fluttered
against the bars and pecked at his fingers. He took the cages down one by
one, put them on the table and whistled and talked to his birds, cleaned
the trays and filled the troughs with fresh water and seed. The
canary-bird got a lump of white sugar and the linnet half an egg, because
of her young ones. Then he stood and watched them washing their beaks and
wings and splashing in the water, pecking at their troughs now full of
seed and at their sugar and cheerfully hopping on and off their perches.
Then, when they were all hung up again in their places on the wall, they
all started whistling together till the kitchen rang with it. The baby
screamed in its cradle. Trientje cried and mother stamped across the
floor in her heavy wooden shoes.

[8] The West-Flemings brew a beer so extremely strong that it is