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8 ground. If he were only rich: then he'd have a motor-car! There was nothing like a motor-car! A motor-car made up for this rotten, stodgy, boring life. To rush along the smooth roads in your car, to let her rip: tock, tock, tock, tock, tock-tock-tock-tock! Ha! . . . Ha! . . . That would be grand! Suppose his father were to make him a present of a car. . . Ha! . . . Tock-tock-tock-tock! . . . And, as he spurted along, he suggested to himself the frantic orgy of speed of a puffing, snorting motor-car, the acrid stench of its petrol-fumes, the ready obedience of the pneumatic-tyred wheels while the car flew through the dust like a storm-chariot over the clouds. It made him poetic tock-tock-tock-tock, tock-tock-tock-tock but, as long as his father lived, he would never have enough money to buy himself a decent car!

Life was stodgy, rotten, boring. . . If only Addie had finished school! But then. . . then he would have to go to the university. . . and into the diplomatic service. . . No, no, the older his boy grew, the less he would see of him. . . How wretched it all was: he did not know whether to wish that Addie was older or not! . . . To think, it wasn't a year ago since the child used to sit on his knee, with his cheek against his father's, his arm round his father's neck; and Van der Welcke would feel that slight and yet sturdy frame against his heart; and now. . . now already he was a lad, a