care of her little brothers and sisters. Adeletje too was plain and in addition ailing and anything but strong, with her narrow, shrunk chest; and Constance often wondered that the two elders had become like that, because she remembered them as the two pretty little fair-haired children that they used to be, frail, it is true, but rosy-cheeked, sweet little children. Alex also was there; and he too often surprised Constance, when she remembered the naughty rascal that he was, now a boy of twenty, pale and sallow, with frightened blue eyes, shy, reserved, with a trick of giving a sudden glance of terror which made her anxious, she did not know why. She recognized her brother Gerrit most in Guy, who was tall, fair and broad, as Gerrit had been, but who had always been unmanageable, with not one serious thought in his head; he was nineteen years old now and as undecided about his future as Alex himself. . . . That was Constance' great care and not only hers but Addie's as well; and Van der Welcke often chaffed his son, that it was not an unmixed joy to be the father of nine children. If Alex was gloomy now, with that strange look, sometimes of sudden fright, in his eyes, Guy was undoubtedly attractive, was genial, pleasant, cheerful, foolish, a great baby and the favourite nephew of Van der Welcke, with whom he went cycling, as Addie never had time now: Addie the serious man, the young doctor with an increasing practice. Guy called Van der Welcke Papa; they got on so well, almost too well together: Van der Welcke, who had remained a child for all his fifty-one years delighted in that tall, fair-haired adopted son of Addie's; and, jealous as he was of all the earnestness, the labour and care displayed by Addie, who had hardly a moment nowadays to give his father,
