Page:Small Souls (1919).djvu/257

Rh real? . . . Oh, really? Upon my word, I thought one of those stones was paste. . . .”

She swallowed it all, accepted the affront with a gentle smile, a word of almost assenting reply:

“Yes, Addie is rather old-fashioned. . . . Oh, it was very difficult for Papa and Mamma van der Welcke. . . . You are right, that stone is a little dull sometimes. . . .”

She swallowed it, took it all so gently and so submissively that Addie, when he happened to be present, looked up at his mother in surprise, thinking her so different from the woman whom he knew, who blazed out for the least thing at Papa and who always behaved towards himself as the spoilt little mother who wanted to be petted and loved by her boy. And the lad, in his small, bright, earnest, doughty soul, felt a sort of amazement at that puzzle of a woman’s soul that was his mother’s:

“Are they all like that, so queer? Or is it only Mamma? And why is she so forbearing towards Aunt Adolphine, when she can’t bear the least thing from Papa?”

This made him still more of a little man towards his mother, with something protecting and condescending, because she was so weak and irresolute and excitable, but also with very much that was affectionate, because that strange womanliness possessed a charm for his small male soul.

Adolphine, however, on the day when the contract was signed, at the big family-dinner at the Witte Brug and the subsequent evening-party for all