"Yes, darling, I'm coming."
She was ready now and turned out the gas. Gerdy ran downstairs again; and Constance found the lamps lit in the drawing-room and Gerdy very busy with the tea-pot and tea-cups. And Constance smiled, for there was a sort of homely peace, in this room, a peace almost of happiness, the lesser happiness which people sometimes find, for a brief moment. Marietje, the eldest of the girls, a motherly little soul from childhood, had coaxed Grandmamma into leaving the conservatory, which was really too cold, had installed her in the back drawing-room, where the old woman now sat, with her shawl round her, her toes on the foot-warmer, her hands trembling in her lap and her head nodding, as though she knew all sorts of things for certain. . . . Always she sat like that and scarcely spoke, only a few words, quietly living away the last few years of her life and already looking at the rest in panorama . . . but quite unconscious of her surroundings. . . . In front of the fire, close together, sat Adeline and Emilie, both silent, but filled with the strange peace that reigned in both of them, because things around them were so youthful and so bright. For at this hour all the young people were gathered in the drawing-room, all Gerrit's children, except Constant, who was seventeen and at a boarding-school near Arnhem, to Gerdy's great regret, for she and he had always been together, two good little, fair-haired children. Marietje was twenty-two now, had not grown up pretty, was tall and lank, fair-haired, really an unattractive girl, though she had a certain lovableness from always caring for others, especially for Grandmamma: she had acquired this very early, as the eldest sister, because her mother had at once and as a matter of course entrusted her with the
