"Ah, dear Juffrouw Laps, you must manage to be here when he comes. He writes the prescriptions with a gold pen; and his coachman wears a brown bear-skin cape."
That gold pen and the bear-skin cape! Ah, if everyone who preaches truth could only dress up his coachman so swell! But alas, alas--I know a great many people who love the truth, and they have no coachman at all--not to mention the bear-skin.
And gold pens often get into the wrong hands.
"I just wanted Juffrouw Zipperman to come sometime when the doctor's here. Run and tell her, Gertrude, that I said Walter was sick, and say that we have lunch about twelve. He came about that time yesterday. And Leentje, you go to the grocer's--we need salt--have something to say about it--it's not just to be gossiping, you know--I despise gossip--but I would like to know if the people have noticed it. And you, Pietro, remember that you are to give me a clean cap when he comes--for the doctor is such an elegant gentleman, and such a doctor! And all that he said--I drank it all in. Mina, you mustn't stare at him again like that; it's not proper. But I'm curious to know if the people at the grocer's have seen him!"
I shouldn't like to be severe on her; but it seems to me that Juffrouw Pieterse was gradually beginning to take pleasure in Walter's illness.
There is something swell in having such a carriage standing before one's door.
Juffrouw Laps had come: "But dear Juffrouw Pieterse, what am I to do about my uncle? You are invited; and I have told him that there will be a poem."
"Very bad, Juffrouw Laps. You can see though that that poor worm can't write the poem. What about Stoffel? Why not ask him to write it?"
"It's all right with me. Just so it's a poem; otherwise I'm disgraced."
Stoffel was requested to take Walter's place, but he raised objections at once.
"You don't know what that would mean, mother. I would lose the respect of the boys. For anyone working with youth, respect is the main thing; and such a poem----"
"But the boys at school need not know it."
"But the man would tell somebody and then--you don't understand it. At the Diaconate school there was a fellow who wrote verses; and what has become of him? He went to India, mother, and he still owes me for half a bottle of ink. That's the way it goes, mother. For me to write such a poem? No, no, mother--for a boy like Walter it's all right; but when one is already a teacher!"