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 you sit down and there’s no fire in the parlour we'll have to sit here.

He took part in the taffy pulling. Selina wondered if Geertje and Jozina would ever have done squealing. It was half-past eight before she bundled them off to bed with a plate of clipped taffy lozenges between them. She heard them scuffling and scrimmaging about in the rare freedom of their parents’ absence.

““Now, children!” she called. “You know what you promised your mother and father.”

She heard Geertje’s tones mimicking her mincingly, “You know what you promised your mother and father.” Then a cascade of smothered giggles.

Pervus had been to town, evidently, for he now took from his coat pocket a bag containing half a dozen bananas—that delicacy of delicacies to the farm palate. She half peeled two and brought them in to the pigtails. They ate them thickly rapturous, and dropped off to sleep immediately, surfeited.

Pervus DeJong and Selina sat at the kitchen table, their books spread out before them on the oilcloth. The sweet heavy scent of the fruit filled the room. Selina brought the parlour lamp into the kitchen, the better to see. It was a nickel-bellied lamp with a yellow glass shade that cast a mellow golden glow.

“You didn’t go to the meeting,” primly. “Mr. and Mrs. Pool went.”

“No. No, I didn’t go.”

“Why not?”

She saw him swallow. “I got through too late. I