of going to Bertha’s, because she found her own past there.
And what the old woman loved above all things in Bertha’s house was the mutual sympathy, the family-affection which she had always fostered in her own house, which she still fostered, thanks to the institution of those Sunday evenings, to keep the children together at all costs. Yes, in Van Naghel and Bertha that sentiment, that constant thought for the children was very strong; and there was one thing which Mamma van Lowe had not done and which Bertha was doing, which was to receive the son again, after he had once left the house, now that he was returning with a sick wife and two little children. It touched her: oh, how good they were to their tribe; and what a thousand pities that that little doll-wife was so ill! And the children, too, had that same family-affection among themselves. Otto had always kept up a busy correspondence with his eldest sister, Louise, who was twenty-five and came next to him in age; the two Leiden boys were exceedingly nice to their three fashionable little sisters and Henri was even a little bit jealous because Emilie was engaged; only Karel was perhaps rather too much out of doors and away from the family-circle for so young a boy, with all his clubs and his importance; and, because of that, Marietje, the youngest girl, of fourteen, was left a good deal alone. And yet they all liked Marietje: her big brothers, the other girls. . . . Yes, that was the charming thing with all those children: the family-affection, the fondness
