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238 though all of this was of such immense interest to the friend or sister that nothing more immense could be imagined. If, thereupon, the friend or sister, for the sake of conversation, in her turn described her own thoughts, or arrangements, or methods of entertaining, Adolphine was unable to listen to a word and showed plainly that the affairs of the sister or friend did not interest her in the least and that, for instance, the quality of the covering of her, Adolphine’s, chairs, or the fresh air of the street in which she, Adolphine, lived, or the velvet of the collar of the great-coat of Van Saetzema, Adolphine’s husband, was of much greater importance. For she wanted the sister or friend to realize, above anything else, that in her, Adolphine’s, life everything was of the best and finest kind: things animate and inanimate, things movable and immovable alike. Adolphine’s cook, the sister or friend was assured, cooked better than any other cook, especially than Bertha’s cook; Adolphine’s dog, a pug, was the sweetest pug of all the pugs in the world. And, while she bragged like this, she was filled with a deep-seated dread, asked herself, almost unconsciously:

“Can my cook really cook? And isn’t my pug, if the truth were told, an ill-tempered little brute?”

But these were deeply-hidden doubts; and, to her family and friends, Adolphine boasted loudly of all and everything that belonged to her and insisted upon an admiring appreciation of her children and