The boy had grown serious. For that little incident represented more to him than a quarrel with a cousin about a word of abuse: it had suddenly opened a window to him, who was already none too young for his years, given him a view into the people around him, the big, older, grown-up, serious people, the people to whom he would belong later, when he too was big and old and grown-up; and, at the same time, it had given him his first great sorrow. The boy had grown more serious, more serious than he already was, now that he had discussed it calmly with Frans van Naghel and told him that he had asked his father about it and that the nickname was a pure slander. And the delicate bloom on his child-soul, which was like the soul of a little man, was not only offended by that slander and soiled by it and profaned, but that fledgling man’s soul, with its downy freshness, was startled and astonished and shocked and did not understand why the people around him uttered slanders, the people for whom Mamma had longed because she missed them so in her loneliness and because she was filled with that strange feeling, that passion for her family. Why, why did people slander? Why did they speak evil? For he now felt that they all knew that nickname and perhaps all believed that slander a little, inasmuch as they all slandered. What did it benefit
