mering voices of early springtime, as they went along the stairs and passages with their nurse—one already toddling on foot, the other still carried—to go for a drive in the governess-cart or to play in the conservatory, where the old great-grandmother, at the window, looked on with vague smiles at their playfulness, which was that of very small children. And, the day after Constance' arrival with Marietje in the grey-white blizzard, how surprised they all were when Addie telegraphed that he was coming, next day, with Uncle Ernst! Two or three words only in the telegram, with no explanation: how astounded they were that Addie had managed to get that done! Constance and Guy went at once to the little villa where they took in patients: yes, the doctor had already wired for the two rooms, they were told, and everything was being got ready, that was to say, the bedroom; for the gentleman would furnish the sitting-room himself. And on the next day Addie and Uncle Ernst actually arrived. Ernst's furniture was being sent on from the Hague; his china had been packed up under his own and Addie's supervision; and, though Ernst at first looked at the bare sitting-room with great suspicion, tapping at the walls, listening at the partition and declaring that the people—the man of the house, himself a male nurse, and the trained nurse, his wife—were spying behind the door, just like the landlady and her cad of a brother at the Hague, nevertheless he was pleased, surprised to find the room so large, though he missed the sombre canal in the Nieuwe Vitley, which he loved for the gloom of its colouring and atmosphere. As he passed through the garden with Addie, leaning on Addie's arm, he thought it strange that he saw walking through the white snow, accompanied by the nurse, an old lady, the only patient at the moment, though
