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322 But Addie gave a decided refusal:

“I’ll do anything to please you, Mamma, but I’ll never go back to those boys.”

Constance lost her temper:

“So on account of what you yourself call a boys’ quarrel—about a cat—you wish to remain on bad terms with the children of your mother’s sister!”

Addie took fright: it was true, the cause seemed very unreasonable.

But Van der Welcke, himself irritable under the restraint which he had been imposing upon himself, said, trembling all over:

“I don’t choose, Constance, that Addie should continue to go about with those boys.”

His determined manner brought her temper seething up; and all her gentle calmness vanished:

“And I choose,” she exclaimed, “that Addie should make friends with them!”

“Mamma, I can’t, really!”

“Constance, it’s impossible.”

Though she was quivering in all her nerves, there was something in the manifest determination of them both that calmed her. But she grew suspicious:

“Tell me why you quarrelled. If you can’t make it up, then it wasn’t about a cat.”

“Let us first have our lunch in peace, if possible,” said Van der Welcke. “I’ll tell you everything presently, at least if you can be calm.”

He realized that he could no longer keep her in ignorance. She collected all her strength of mind