e masque this year; Emilie
was receiving a trousseau that cost three times as much as the one which
Bertha had had in her day from Papa and Mamma van Lowe; Marianne must
have her simplest dresses lined with silk; Karel, the schoolboy, a tall,
thin, weakly lad, but nevertheless a member of all sorts of football-,
cricket- and tennis-clubs, had an allowance for pocket-money that was
positively ridiculous; and Bertha saw tendencies in her youngest girl
that made her anxious for the future. And so, outwardly, it was a great
house full of movement: Papa a minister, the girls presented at Court,
the boys spending money lustily; and, inwardly, there was many a
despondent conversation between Van Naghel and Bertha as to how they
could possibly economize: of course, Otto must be helped first; the
boys, of course, must take their degrees first; the girls, of course,
were bound to go out; and Karel, of course, was obliged to keep up his
football- and cricket-clubs. They might give one dinner less each
winter, but that was really the only thing. And, if the boys, after
taking their degrees, were to cost as much money as Otto was costing
now; if Louise and Marianne also got married and had to have the same
trousseau as Emilie: if it was to go on like that, always and always,
with never a moment for taking breath and saving a little: then they did
not know what they were to do; for, let Bertha calculate as much as she
pleased, the thing was not to be done on fifty thousand guilders a year.

Then, if Van Naghel lost his temper, he reproached Bertha, saying that
it was all her fault, that she was a Van Lowe, that the Van Lowes had
never been able to calculate, that the Van Lowes' own housekeeping had
been run on much too extravagant a scale, in the old days; but Bertha,
blinking her eyes unmoved, reminded him that he owed his career to Papa
van Lowe, to Papa's connections in the years, following upon his term as
governor-general, when he still had a great deal of influence in
Holland; and she showed him her housekeeping-accounts, in which she had
carefully made the different entries, telling him that, if he absolutely
insisted upon living on the scale they did, it could not be done for
less, with the best will in the world.... And, seeing no way out of it,
they made friends again and did not mention the subject of money for
another month; and, outwardly, it was the regular household of a
minister of state, full of solid Dutch comfort, w