able and sensible. It's as though she were catching herself up. . . . Yes, amuse yourself, child. . . . Look, how wildly excited she is with that dog, like a real child; she's enjoying the fine weather; she's just like a child of nature; and she looks well too: she'll grow into a pretty girl, though she's a trifle heavily built. . . . She no longer has that stupid look in her eyes; and there's something kind and genuine about her . . . in her behaviour towards old Mamma and Ernst, something motherly and understanding combined, as if she felt she had something in common with their clouded minds. . . . It's jolly to look at the child, to see her sprouting and blossoming, exactly like a plant that is now receiving just the right light and just the right amount of water . . . and yet she owes it all to Addie and will very likely never know that she owes it to him. . . . Yes, the fellow wields a wonderful influence. . . . Alex is keeping his end up now in Amsterdam and seems to be losing some of his melancholia since Addie has been talking to him so regularly: poor chap, he was ten years old when he saw his father lying dead in all that blood; and it affected him for all time! . . . We were right to take all those children to live with us: that sort of thing gives a man an object in life, even me, though I myself do nothing, though it's Constance and Addie who act. I feel a certain satisfaction, even though I just let them do as they please. . . . Who would ever have thought that it would become like this, the big, lonely house, where Father and Mother lived so very long and sadly by themselves, now so full, as a refuge for Constance' family? It turned out so strangely, so very strangely. . . . Oh, if my boy were only happier! . . . Who would have thought that he, he who has everything in his favour, should go falling in love with a woman
