"Mother! Walter's pinching me," cried Laurens, the printer's apprentice; and Juffrouw Pieterse groaned, that those boys couldn't even keep quiet at night.
The "House of Pieterse" gathered at Walter's bed. There was the noble mother of the family enveloped in a venerable jacket that fell in broad folds over a black woolen skirt. There was Trudie, with her stupid blue eyes; and Myntje and Pietje--but what am I talking about? In the new home Trudie had become Gertrude, like a morganatic princess in Hessia; and Myntje was now Mina, but preferred to be called Mine, as that sounded more Frenchy. But her stupid face remained unchanged. Pietje was now Pietro. Stoffel had said that was a very swell name.
Stoffel, too, had now appeared on the scene, to the great astonishment of his mother, who expected so much of him. This fine sense of propriety had been developed in the new home.
"What's the matter with you, boy?" cried everybody at once.
"The boy is foolish." That was the unanimous verdict of the family.
And they were not altogether wrong. Walter was delirious.
"They are carrying her away--around and around--Daughter of the Sun, decide--here is Telasco--thou shalt die, Aztalpa--Femke, stay, stay, I will watch the clothes--I will shoot the doe--a widower of God--together through the ivory gate--there she is again--stay, Omicron!"
"Ought we to call in a preacher?" asked Juffrouw Pieterse hesitatingly. She didn't know whether praying was needed or a whipping--or both.
And now, perhaps for the first time in his life, Stoffel expressed a sensible thought: "Mother, we ought to have a doctor. Walter is sick."
Walter had nervous fever. It was fortunate for him that a doctor was called in, and still more fortunate that it was a man who understood Walter's mental troubles. He exerted a most wholesome influence on the boy; though this came later, as at first he could only treat the disease.
On Juffrouw Pieterse, too, he had a good influence. To her great astonishment, he explained to her that children ought not to be packed together in a bed as if they were superfluous pieces of furniture being thrown aside; that air, light, play, enjoyment, exercise are all necessary for the development of body and soul; that whipping does no good, and that she had better dispense with her "divine worship." He told her of other things she had never heard of; and she listened willingly, for the doctor----
