photographs of my little
nephews and nieces. And yet my brain's whirling, now that I am seeing
you all. There are such a lot of us: I don't think there can be many
families as big as ours. Bertha's alone is a big household.... Fancy
Bertha a grandmother!... It's dreadful, how old we're growing! I am
forty-two! Oh, I couldn't have gone on living in Brussels! We had no one
left there: our friends were scattered, gone away. Van der Welcke, too,
was beginning to long for Holland, for Addie's sake as well as his own.
Addie speaks very good Dutch, though: I always made him keep it up. He
has a bit of a Flemish accent, perhaps: what do you think, Addie?... We
had a Flemish servant.... Oh, what a lot I have to tell you!" she
laughed, happily. "Nothing interesting, you know, but I feel as if I
must tell you everything, talk and talk and talk to you, to all of you,
my brothers, my sisters!" She suddenly got up. "Karel, do you remember,
in India, how we used to play in the river, behind the Palace; how we
walked on those great stone boulders, you and I and Gerrit? We three
always played together. Yes, Bertha had been married a year or two,
while we were still children. Is Bertha fifty yet? She's quite grey! I'm
going grey myself!... Dear Bertha!... And Louis and Gertrude, who died
at Buitenzorg.... Do you remember, Karel? It was we three who were
always together. You used to carry me over the water on your back. How
naughty we were! I was quite thirteen or fourteen, at that time.... And
things are so funny, in India: next year, I was in long frocks and going
to the balls.... I thought it delightful, all that grandeur: the
aides-de-camp; the national anthem wherever we went: I used to imagine
that they played it for me, the viceroy's little daughter!... Yes, Van
Naghel was at the bar then, at Semarang; Bertha didn't come in for any
of it.... Oh, it's past now, my vanity! That shows you how a person
changes. You are changed, too, Karel: you have become so sedate, so
dignified. What a pity you are no longer a burgomaster: you're cut out
for it, Karel!"

She tried to speak lightly, suddenly feeling that she was talking too
much about herself, letting herself go, while Karel and Cateau sat
staring at her. And yet she cared for them: was not Karel her brother,
who had always been bracketed with Gerrit in her childhood memories, and
was not Cateau his wife, though she had not a sympathetic face, with
those great round eyes of hers? Were