Page:Georges Eekhoud - Escal Vigor, a novel.djvu/66

42 painting?" suggested Kehlmark, with a bored air, affecting even to suppress a yawn.

Guidon's comrades made a circle around the Govaertzes and Kehlmark, amusing themselves with the confusion of the little shepherd-lad, thus placed by his own father on the stool of repentance. The scamps fluttered about, and gave each other elbow digs in the ribs, emphasising, with laughter and murmurs, the complaints which the Burgomaster made about his son.

Together with Guidon, Henry felt himself the object of all this bantering. Claudie regarded her brother with harsh and malevolent looks. Henry guessed that the Burgomaster disparaged and decried his boy thus in order to flatter Claudie, his favourite. Between this rough, mannish girl and the almost refined young peasant, the incompatibility was bound to be extremely irritating. It occurred to Henry that there must be violent quarrels at the fireside of the Govaertzes, and he felt a singular tightness of heart at the thought. Claudie, too, seemed to him visibly provoked by the attention shown by the Dykgrave to this child who was repudiated, put under the ban, and living almost on the outskirts of the family.