THE BODLEY GRANDCHILDREN AND THEIR JOURNEY IN HOLLAND. CHAPTER I. THE BODLEYS AND THE VAN WYCKS. ONE afternoon in February, 1881, a carriage loaded with trunks drove up to the door of a house in Second Avenue, New York. There were two houses, in fact, side by side, and their doors being next each other, it was hard to say before which door the carriage stopped. Moreover, both the doors opened at the same moment, and in each doorway stood a child of the same age, yes, born on the same day of the same year, and this was their birthday. The chief difference between them was that one was a boy and the other a girl, and they had different names. But they had the same grandparents and the same aunt, and it was these who got out of the carriage, and came up the broad flight of steps which led to the doors of the two houses. The steps were wet with a recent snow, and as the children wore their slippers, they waited at the two thresholds, but their tongues rattled on. |