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Rh passing his matriculation; but, when he took two years over his first examination and failed in the second, Addie himself had considered that Alex had better look out for something different, however much his mother, with her mind full of Gerrit, would have liked to see her eldest son an officer. . ..

By this time, he was nearly twenty; and it was so late for him to go to the Merchants' School at Amsterdam that Addie had decided first to obtain all the details for himself and therefore had gone to Amsterdam, to see the head-master. . . . That was why, this morning, Adeline came to talk to Addie, a little nervously, rather frightened of what he might say, because he had been exceedingly dissatisfied about Alex, discouraged, not knowing what to do with him next. . . . He would like to have a talk with Alex, he said; and Adeline, sad about her son and rather frightened of Addie, went to fetch Alex and brought him back with her. He was tall, slender, pale, fair-haired: he did not look strong, although he had resembled his father, especially as a child; every year his features seemed to become more and more fixed and his face became like a spectral mask of pallor, with the look in the eyes a little shy under the lashes, as with a timorous, bashful and at the same time deep inner concealment of invisible, silent things. . . . Now that his mother had come to fetch him from the room where he sat reading, he came in with her, evidently nervous about the coming talk with Addie. But Addie said:

"I ought really to be going out, Aunt. . . . Alex, can you go with me part of the way? Then we can talk things over as we walk. The roads are too wet for cycling."

Addie's eyes and voice set Adeline's mind at ease,