ke were talking to Van
Vreeswijck. "This is most charming! A party of four, like this, in this
pretty room. That's just what I like. Compare all that formality of
Bertha's. Bertha never gives these intimate little dinners. This is just
what I like at my age"--Paul was thirty-five--"no formality, but
everything elegant and nicely-served and good.... Excellent _hors
d'oeuvres!_ Constance knows how to do things! Compare the friendly, but
homely rumpsteak which I sometimes get at Gerrit and Adeline's; or
Adolphine's harum-scarum dinners.... No, this is as it should be: a
quiet, friendly little dinner and yet everything just right.... Van
Vreeswijck's dinner-jacket looks very well on him; only I don't like the
cut of his waistcoat: too high, I think, his waistcoat. Those are nice
buttons of his. But he's wearing a ready-made black tie! How is it
possible! Strange how you suddenly perceive an aberration like that in a
man: a ready-made tie! Who on earth wears a ready-made tie nowadays!
Still, he looks very well otherwise.... Nice soup, this _veloute_....
What a duck Constance looks! Would you ever think that she was a woman
of two-and-forty! She's like Mamma: Mamma also has that softness, that
distinction, that same smile; Mamma even has those dimples still, in the
corners of her mouth.... No, none of my other sisters could have done
that, pulled back the hangings herself with that pretty gesture and
asked us so naturally to come in to dinner.... You'll see, Constance
will make her house very cosy, even though they are not rich and though
they won't go into society officially. These friendly little dinners are
just the thing...."

He had to join in the conversation now, with Van Vreeswijck; and Van der
Welcke, who was in a pleasant mood, let himself go in a burst of
irrepressible frankness:

"Tell me, Vreeswijck, who is it that's been saying we wanted to be
presented at Court?..."

Van Vreeswijck hesitated, thought it a dangerous subject of
conversation. But Constance laughed gently:

"Yes," she said, seconding her husband, "there seems to be a rumour that
we have that intention; and the intention never existed for a moment."

Van Vreeswijck breathed again, relieved:

"Oh, mevrouw, how do people ever get hold of their notions? One will
suggest, 'I wonder if they mean to be presented?' The other catches only
the last words and says, 'They mean to be presented!' And so the story
gets about."

"I shouldn't care for it i