also, even probably, he would soon be made a Resident, and then everything would in no time be quite easily arranged.
“Although I should be very sorry, Tine, to leave Lebak, for there is much to do here. You must be very economical, sweetheart, then we may be able to pay everything, even without promotion . . . and then I should like to remain here a long time, a very long time!”
This admonition to economy, however, he need not have addressed to her. Truly not she was in any way the cause that it had become necessary to be so careful, but she had so entirely identified herself with her Max that she felt the admonition in no way as a reproach, and neither was it. For Havelaar knew but too well that it was only he who had failed through his excessive liberality, and that her fault—if then a fault could be admitted in her case—had only been her love of Max, which ever approved what he did.
Yes, she had approved of his taking two poor women, who lived in Newstreet and had never been out of Amsterdam, and who had never “been taken out,” round the Haarlem fair, under the amusing pretext that the King had charged him with: “the entertainment of old ladies who led a particularly good life.” She had approved of his treating the orphans of all the Amsterdam institutions to cake and almond-milk, and loading them with toys. She fully understood that he paid the hotel bill for the family of poor singers who wanted to return to their own country, but who did not wish to leave their belongings behind, including the harp and the violin and the bassoon which they needed so badly for their poorly paid trade. She could not consider it wrong that he brought to her the girl who had spoken to him in the street one evening . . . that he gave her food and lodging, and did not address to her the all too cheap admonition, “Go thou and sin no more!” ere he had made it possible for her not to “sin.” She admired it in her Max, that he had the piano returned to the drawing-room of the father whom he had heard say how it had hurt him that his girls
