Page:Dr Adriaan (1918).djvu/76

70 "Granny! . . . Granny like to look at pictures?"

The old woman, vaguely, fancied herself at Buitenzorg, in a large white palace among mountains, which stood out against a blue sky, and coco-trees, which waved gently like ostrich-feathers; and she thought that her little daughter Gertrude was kneeling by her and wanting to look at the books with her. Her old mouth wore a little puckered smile; and she put out her hands for the book, which Klaasje held up clumsily. But the old woman was too weak to pull the heavy book on to her lap and it slipped obstinately down her dress to the floor, against the foot-warmer. Klaasje grew angry:

"Naughty books, naughty books! . . ."

She flew into a temper and struck the books again; but her little hand was hurt and she suddenly began to cry.

"Ssh! . . . Ssh! . . ." said Granny, soothingly.

She bent painfully in her big chair and laboriously pulled up the heavy, obstinate book; and Klaasje, with her eyes still wet, pushed up from below, till at last it lay in Grandmamma's lap. Then Klaasje sighed, after the final victory:

"Turn over," she said.

She turned over the heavy, clumsy binding and said:

"Klaasje will explain. . . ."

But the black pictures, the dark portraits held no story for her; and, pointing her finger at the picture or the portrait, she could not make one up, could not find her tongue:

"Turn over, turn over," she repeated.

She was longing for colours, yellow, blue and red; but the pictures contained black, all black