Addie was nearly sixteen. He did not grow much in stature, he promised to have the same build as his father, for there was something sturdy and yet delicate, something robust and yet gentle about him: strength and refinement combined. He continued to look older than he was, as though he could never quite catch himself up: his face, carved in firm and yet delicate lines, wore an air of calm serenity that did not belong to his years; his cheeks were covered with a golden down: indeed, his mother would have liked him to start shaving, which however he was not willing to do yet; and so the vague strip of golden velvet above his upper lip had become a decided moustache. His hair, with its soft, short, brown curls, was exactly like his father's; and his eyes also were his father's eyes, but they had grown still more serious, if possible, calm and tender, with a smiling sadness in their depths, and, above all, Addie's eyes were of a clear, untroubled blue, with none of the boyishness which shone in Van der Welcke's. Addie's were northern eyes, as his mother said: Dutch eyes, she called them, as distinguished from the Creole eyes of all her family, the Van Lowes.
