Page:Twilight of the Souls (1917).djvu/13

Rh Alexander, Guy, Geraldine, christened after Adeline's family, while Marie and Constant were called after Mamma and Papa van Lowe.

"Look here, not so many of those grand names," Gerrit had said, when Jan was coming. And, after Klaasje —a name which the whole family considered hideous—Gerrit said:

"If we have another, it shall be called after me, Gerrit, whether it's a boy or a girl."

"Gertrude, surely, if it's a girl?" Adeline had suggested.

"No," said Gerrit, "she shall be Gerrit all the same."

Gerrit's manias were Mamma van Lowe's despair; but so far there had been no question of a grand-daughter Gerrit.

Gerrit had no favourites. His long arms swung round as many children as he could get hold of and he drew them on his knees, between his knees, almost under his feet; and by some miraculous chance he had never broken an arm or leg of any of them, so that Adeline and the children themselves were never afraid and only Mamma van Lowe, when she witnessed Gerrit's embraces, went through a thousand terrors. And to the children the joy of life seemed to be embodied in their father, a joy which they soon came to picture instinctively as a tall man, an hussar, with a loud voice