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Rh want to have my own house quickly. The hotel is expensive; and I dislike it. By the time the furniture has come from Brussels, by the time we are settled. . . .”

“Oh, well, Mummy,” said Addie, decisively, “Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know.”

She smiled at once. Every word spoken by her child was a balm, an anodyne. The old grandmother smiled. Dorine smiled.

“Addie,” said Mamma van Lowe, “you must do your best to help Papa and Mamma with the house.”

“Yes, Granny. It won’t be plain sailing. . . .”

The child was more at his ease than on the Sunday evening. Granny was very kind; so was Aunt Dorine, to trot about like that, after those houses.

“Aunt Dorine, do you always run errands?”

Everybody laughed: it was a mania of Dorine’s to traverse the Hague daily from end to end; she was a very willing creature and she was particularly busy just now for Bertha and Adolphine, because of the two weddings.

Ernst and Paul entered.

“We heard that Van der Welcke was at Mamma’s,” said Paul, “and we’ve come to be introduced.”

“These at least are not visits in optima forma,” thought Constance to herself.

Ernst resembled Bertha and blinked his eyes; but, in addition, he was odd, shy, always timid, even in the family-circle. There was something bashful