Page:Small Souls (1919).djvu/198

190 Van der Welcke was sitting glowering in the smoking-room.

“Here’s your cheese and biscuits, Father. You don’t like apple-pudding, do you?”

“Oh, I don’t want anything!”

“Now, don’t be disagreeable. Eat up your cheese.”

“I can’t eat, when Mamma. . .”

“She’s sorry already; she’s all nerves to-day. So don’t talk about it any more.”

“I? I’m not talking!”

“No, but soeda, now, as Aunt Ruyvenaer says. Will you eat your cheese now? Presently, we’ll go for a ride.”

He went away.

“Here I sit, just like a naughty child,” thought Van der Welcke, “with my little plate of cheese and biscuits. That silly boy!”

And he ate up his bit of cheese and laughed. . . .Downstairs, Constance had put a piece of pudding on Addie’s plate. He ate slowly. She looked at him contentedly, because he was enjoying it.

“If you hadn’t fired up like that,” he said, “I’d have told you something, about Henri.”

“What about him?”

“That chap’s going to be ill.”

“Why?”

“He’s so upset at Emilie’s marriage that it’s made him quite unwell. Kees Hijdrecht got angry and said, ‘Are you in love with your sister?’ And then