Walter was delighted. He went to the back room, got a slate pencil and began to write. It could hardly be called a success. "A widower of God"--"O God, a widower!" That was as far as he got.
He gnawed on the pencil till he had pulverized it and worn out his teeth, but it wouldn't go. He was continually being interrupted by Stoffel's masculine and feminine verses. He had been too proud, and now he was receiving his punishment. He began to believe that his mother was right when she said nothing would ever come of him.
Nor could Leentje help him. So he determined to make another attempt to-morrow. Perhaps he could do better then. Leentje agreed with him.
"All right," said Juffrouw Pieterse. "But don't disgrace us all. Remember, I told Juffrouw Laps you could do it; and the man's birthday comes Thursday week. So you haven't any too much time."
Walter went to Ash Gate, found his bridge and began to weep bitterly.
"See what's the matter with that boy," he heard a woman saying to a girl fourteen or fifteen years old. "Perhaps he has lost something."
Walter looked up, and was surprised; for he seemed to have seen that face before. It reminded him of Fancy.
"Now, everything will be all right There you are; and I have been hunting for you."
"Yes, yes, but I just didn't know it. But I know it now. Tell me right quick how to write the poem!"
The girl, who was helping her mother place the linen on the grass for bleaching, looked at Walter in astonishment. She hurried back to her mother to say that she didn't know what was the matter with the boy, but that there was certainly something wrong. "He looks as if he were scared half to death," she decided.
Then she ran and fetched water from the house near by and made Walter drink. He saw that he had made a mistake; but there was something in the manner of the girl that drew him to her irresistibly, even though her name was only Femke. So the mother addressed her. And this name reminded him of Fancy, which was something.
Femke pointed to an inverted basket and told him to tell the cause of his trouble; and Walter did it as well as he could, while the mother was busy with the linen.
"Maybe I can help you," the mother said. "I have a nephew who is a widower."