the governess-court, whatever the weather: it was Addie's principle and they throve on it; and their youthfulness, stammering its first words, was like a bright, rosy dawn of the future, as they went along the sombre stairs and dark passages and rooms, casting a sudden golden radiance in that atmosphere of the past, as though they were suddenly powdering through the brown of the shadows, as though they were sprinkling the sound of children's voices through the brown air, which had not caught a childish sound for so many years. . . .
When Addie was out, visiting his patients, Van der Welcke remained in his room, reading and smoking, Uncle Jupiter, as Gerdy called him, because he usually sat enveloped in the blue clouds of his cigarette; and Guy did a little work, for his examination as a clerk in the postal service, except when he went to Utrecht, where he was receiving private tuition in geography. But when he was working at home, in his little room, up on the third floor, his young, healthy restlessness constantly made him get up and run downstairs, to borrow an atlas of Van der Welcke, hang round Uncle Henri for a bit, smoke a cigarette with him, then go back upstairs. He would look at his books and maps for three minutes and then jump up again, stretch himself, take up his dumb-bells, feeling stiff from the long sitting, and go downstairs once more.
Constance met him in the hall:
"Aren't you working, Guy?"
"Yes, I am, Auntie. Where are you off to?"
"To the store-cupboard."
He went with her and Marietje to the store-cupboard, conducted a raid among the almonds and raisins, talked a lot of nonsense and made Constance laugh, until she said:
"Come on, Guy . . . run along upstairs."
