"No, child. . . . But do keep your little mouth shut now. I'm frightened, the wind's so cold."
They walked on in silence, Adeletje accommodating her step by Aunt Constance' regular pace. Constance was a good walker; and Addie always said that, leading the outdoor life she did, Mama grew no older. They had now been living for ten years at Driebergen, in the big, old, gloomy house, which seemed to be lighted only by themselves, by their affection for one another, but which Constance had never brought herself to like, hard though she tried. Ten years! How often, oh, how often she saw them speed before her in retrospect! . . . Ten years: was it really ten years? How quickly they had passed! They had been full and busy years; and Constance was satisfied with the years that had fleeted by, only she was distressed that it all went so fast and that she would be old before. . . . But the wind was blowing too fiercely and Adeletje was hanging heavily on her arm—poor child, she was shivering: how cold she must be!—and Constance could not follow her thoughts. . . . Before . . . before . . . Well, if she died, there would be Addie. . . . Only . . . No, she couldn't think now; and besides they would be home presently. . . . They would be home . . . Home! The word seemed strange to her; and she did not think that right. And yet, struggle against the singular emotion as she would, she could not cure herself of thinking that big house gloomy and regretting the little villa in the Kerkhoflaan at the Hague, even though she had never known any great domestic happiness there. . . . Still . . . still, one loves the thing that one has grown used to; and was it not funny that she had grown so fond of that little house, where she had lived four years, and been
