"No, my dear chap, it makes you so hot. And all that perspiring is such a dirty business."
"Well, in that case," thought Van der Welcke, "I'll go on my own, but it's not particularly cheerful. If only Guy weren't working! I can't very well take him from his work . . . to come cycling! So I'll go on my own. . . . Lord, Lord, how boring! . . . How boring everything and everybody is . . . without my boy! How that poor Gerdy is moping! . . . No. I can't endure it, I can't do it, I can't go bicycling by myself. . . . I'll ask Guy to come. It'll do him good: the boy is too healthy to be always sitting with a pile of books round him."
Van der Welcke went upstairs, reflecting that Addie would not approve at all if he knew that his own father was taking Guy from his work . . . to go bicycling, as he had often taken Addie himself in the past.
"But Addie has so much method, he used to divide his time so splendidly between his work, his mother . . . and me," thought Van der Welcke. "Still, to-day, I simply can not go bicycling on my own . . . and so I'll just play the part of the tempter."
He had reached the first storey; and here too the windows on the passage were wide open and the summer, fragrant and radiant, entered the gloomy old house, whose brown shadows vanished in patches of sunlight. The sunlight glided along the dark walls, the oak doors, the worn stairs, along the faded carpets and curtains and through the open doors; and it was strange, but all this new summer, however much Van der Welcke had longed for it throughout the long, dreary winter, the winter of wind and rain, now failed to cheer him, on the contrary, depressed him with inexplicable sadness.
