the friends and relations, boasted aloud in her self-complacency. She bragged to Uncle Ruyvenaer, to Karel and Cateau, to Constance, to Gerrit and Adeline: those were fine rooms, the rooms of the Witte Brug, much finer than the rooms in the Doelen; that was a splendid dinner, the dinner which she had given: it cost a lot of money, though, and she told how much, but added a couple of hundred guilders to the cost; and did they remember that impossible dinner of Bertha’s, at Emilie’s wedding, and the queer dishes that had been set before them? Wasn’t it a splendid dessert, with beautiful strawberries, which she had given? And so many and at this season, too: but you had to pay for them! And how gay they had been at table, her family—as though that same family were not also Bertha’s family—and her friends: so very different from that pretentious set of Bertha’s! There was such a gay, spontaneous tone in the speeches and the conversation; and did Gerrit remember that deathly stillness at table at Emilietje’s dinner? Such nice people, Dijkerhof’s parents, her girl’s future father- and mother-in-law. . . . And how well Floortje looked, didn’t she? And the other girls were prettily dressed too. She boasted so breathlessly of everything, of every detail, that neither Uncle nor Gerrit had a single opportunity of expressing their appreciation, of giving voice to their admiration; and it was not until she had passed on, boasting right and left to her acquaintances—“Well, what do you say to my dinner? Well, what do you say to my party?
