He offered us shrimps, one by one, first peeling them with kindly fingers of extraordinary blackness, and we ate enough to satisfy him that we meant well: and then just as we reached Middelburg, he gave me a cigar and walked all the way to the Abbey with me, watching me smoke it.

It was an ordeal; but I hope, for the honour of England, that I carried it through successfully and convinced him that an Englishman knows what to do with courtesy when he finds it.
In the same tram and on the very next seat to us was the pleasantest little boy that I think I ever saw: a perfect miniature Dutchman, with wide black trousers terminating in a point, pearl buttons, a tight black coat, a black hat, and golden neck links after the Zeeland habit.

He was perhaps four, plump and red and merry, and his mother, who nursed his baby sister, was immensely proud of him.

Some one pressed a twopenny bit into his hand as he left the car, and I watched him telling the great news to half a dozen of the women who were waiting by the side of the road, while his face shone like the setting sun.
They got off at Souburg, the little village between Flushing and Middelburg where Charles V.was living in 1556, after his abdication, before he sailed for his last home.

It is odd to have two such associations with Souburg--the weary emperor putting off the purple, and the little Dutch boer bursting jollily through black velvet.
Flushing played a great part in the great war.