Constance embraced him, she felt in her son's heart a difficult struggle and a swelling of great sorrow. He never spoke of it; he hypnotized Marietje; he regularly kept up Klaasje's reading-lessons and the books with the coloured letters gleamed into the child's awakening imagination; he talked, on Saturdays, at great length with Alex or sat with old Grandmamma and always thought of something to say to her that made her nod her head with soft, smiling satisfaction; he found a moment for his father, for his mother, for all of them: also for the poor sick people on the silent country roads; once he interested himself in an old sick horse which caused Marietje—Mary—great sorrow, when she saw it tortured, and bought it for her and let it run about, for her sake, in a meadow belonging to a farmer whom they knew. And his regular visits were what they all looked forward to, once a week, as to a delightful day; and the other days dragged on, in grey harmony, amid the quiet family life, in which they all recognized the same loss in one another.
Easter arrived; and the three, Constant, Jan and Piet, came home for the holidays. And it was one great emotion, not only for Adeline, but also for Constance and also for Addie, when he came down, an emotion which bound them still more closely together, an emotion aroused by the future of all those boys, an emotion felt over the examinations which they had passed or were about to pass. Constant, now seventeen, was to be transferred this year from the Secondary School at the Hague to the School of Agriculture at Wageningen; Jan, now fifteen, was still at a boarding-school at Barneveld, preparing to go up for his naval examination next year; Piet, now fourteen, was at the Hague, at the Secondary School, with a view to the Polytechnic.
