Yes, they should be happy at Rankas-Betong, Havelaar and his Tine! The only care that oppressed them was the debts which they had left behind in Europe, augmented by the still unpaid expenses of the voyage back to the Indies, and of the furnishing of their house. But they would live on half, even a third of his incomeperhaps he would soon be made Resident, and then all would be arranged in a few years
“Yet I should be sorry, Tine, to leave Lebak; for I have many things to do here, You must be very economical, my dear, and perhaps we may pay off all even without promotionthen I hope to remain here for a long time.”
Now she needed no incitement to economy. It was not her fault that frugality had become necessary; but she had so completely identified herself with her Max that she did not consider this speech as a reproach, which, to be sure, it was not; for Havelaar knew very well that he alone had been wrong through excessive liberality, and that her fault was this,—if fault there was on her side,—that she, out of love for her Max, had always approved of all that he did.
Yes, she had approved when he took those two poor women from the Nieuwstraat (New Street), who had never before left Amsterdam, and never had been out, to the Haarlem fair, under the odd pretext that the King had ordered him “to amuse little old women of respectable
