Now I am a coffee-broker—Last & Co., Laurier Canal, No. 37—there are thirteen of us in the office, and if I count Stern, who receives no salary, there are fourteen. Very well then, my wife is “Juffrouw,” and yet I was to say Madam to this woman. Surely, this was absurd. Everyone must keep to his class, and what is more, only yesterday the bailiffs had taken away some of the belongings. So I considered my “Juffrouw” quite all right, and stuck to it.
I asked why Shawlman had not called at my house for his parcel? She seemed to know about it, and said they had been away, to Brussels. There he had done work for the Indépendance, but he had not been able to stay there because his articles had caused the paper to be several times refused admittance across the French frontier. They had returned to Amsterdam a few days ago, because Shawlman was to get employment here. . . .
“I suppose with Ripesucker?” I asked.
Yes, that was it! But the thing had fallen through, she said. Of this, of course, I knew more than she did herself. He had dropped the Aglaia, and was lazy, pedantic and sickly . . . exactly, that’s why he had got the sack.
And, she continued, he would be sure to come and see me soon, perhaps he was at my house now, for an answer to the request he had made me.
I said he had better call, but he must not ring the bell, for that only gave the servant unnecessary trouble. If he waited a little, I said, the door was bound to be opened some time, when someone or other had to go out. And so I left, and took my sugar-plums back with me, for, speaking frankly, I did not like things there. I did not feel comfortable. Surely a broker isn’t a carrier, I should say, and I maintain that I look respectable. I was wearing my fur coat, and yet she kept sitting down quite simply, and talked to her children as calmly as if she had been alone. Also she seemed to have been crying, and I cannot bear discontented people. Then, it was cold and uncomfortable there—probably because most of the
