The Wrath of the Zuyder Zee by Thomas A. Janvier

It was a little disconcerting to the prophets of evil that the weeks and the months slipped away without any signs of the fulfilment of their prophecies. However keen may have been Marretje's sorrow on her wedding-day, it was not lasting. Indeed, her gentle nature was so filled with a worshipping love for Krelis that he had only to give her a single light look of affection or a half-careless kiss to fill her whole being with happiness. He was a god to her -- this gayly daring young fellow who had raised her up to be a shy little queen in a queendom, she was sure, such as never had been for any other woman in all the world. And Krelis was very well pleased with her frank adoration. It was tickling to his vanity that she should be so completely and so eagerly his loving slave.

Next to her love for Krelis -- and partly because it was a part of her love for him -- Marretje's greatest joy was in her housekeeping. She had taken a just pride in the tidiness of her housekeeping for her grandfather; but it was a very different and far more exciting matter to furbish and polish a house that really was her own. And Krelis's house, of which she was the proud mistress, was far bigger and far finer than her old home. It was a stately dwelling, for Marken, standing on an out-jutting ridge of earth at the back of the Kesbeurt, close upon a delightful little canal -- and from the back doorway was a restful far-off outlook over the marsh-land to the level horizon of the Zuyder Zee. Marretje loved that outlook, and she had it before her often: for down beside the canal was her scouring-shelf -- where she scoured away through long sunny mornings, while Krelis was away at his fishing, until her pots and kettles ranged in the sunlight shone like burnished gold.