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372 to dress yourself, have you? I sometimes think you look very dowdy, Adolphine. It may be Dutch and substantial, but I consider it dowdy. And, on the other hand, you oughtn’t to buy such rubbishy, shabby-genteel things as you do. And you haven’t much notion of arranging your house, either, have you? If you were capable of understanding my taste, I wouldn’t mind helping you to alter your drawing-room. But you would have to begin by getting rid of those horrible antimacassars and those china monkeys and dogs. Do; I wish you would. And choose a quieter carpet. . . . Don’t you find those dinners very trying, Adolphine? I should say that Bertha is more at home in that sort of thing, isn’t she? . . . And so the Erkenbouts go to your dinners, do they? I should have thought that Bruis, of the Phonograaf, was more in your set. But I was forgetting: you haven’t a set, really; you have a bit of everything, an omnium gatherum. . . . Curious, isn’t it, that none of our friends of the old days—our little Court set, let me call it—ever come to you nowadays? What’s the reason? . . . Of course, you have to make your house attractive, if you want to keep your acquaintances. . . . I suppose you don’t care really about seeing people. It’s such hard work for you. . . . You’re more the good mother of your children, though I consider your girls, at least Floortje and Caroline, rather loud; and, as for your boys, you seem quite unable to teach them any sort of manners. . . . Well, if I can be of any use to you, if you want to alter that