This pained him very much, for he had thought a great deal of her. She was ugly, even dirty, and was stoop-shouldered, too. Stoffel, the schoolmaster, said that she had an evil tongue: She was thought to have started the report that he had once eaten strawberries with sugar in the "Netherlands." This was a small garden-restaurant.
I am willing to admit the truth of all this; but what more could one expect for seven stivers and a slice of bread and butter? I have known duchesses who had larger incomes; and still in social intercourse they were not agreeable.
Leentje was stooped as a result of continuous sewing. Her needle kept the whole family clothed; and she knew how to make two jackets and a cap out of an old coat and still have enough pieces left for the gaiters that Stoffel needed for his final examination. He fell through on account of a mistake in Euclid.
With the exception of Walter nobody was satisfied with Leentje. I believe they were afraid of spoiling her by too much kindness. Walter's sisters were always talking about "class" and "rank," saying that "everyone must stay in his place." This was for Leentje. Her father had been a cobbler who soled shoes, while the father of the young Juffrouwen had had a store in which "shoes from Paris" were sold. A big difference. For it is much grander to sell something that somebody else has made than to make something one's self.
The mother thought that Leentje might be a little cleaner. But I am going to speak of the price again, and of the difficulty of washing when one has no time, no soap, no room, and no water. At that time waterpipes had not been laid, and, if they had been, it's a question if the water had ever got as far as Leentje.
So, everyone but Walter had a spite against Leentje. He liked her, and was more intimate with her than with anyone else in the house, perhaps because the others could not endure him, and there was nothing left for him to do but to seek consolation from her. For every feeling finds expression, and nothing is lost, either in the moral or in the material world. I could say more about this, but I prefer to drop the subject now, for the organ-grinder under my window is driving me crazy.
Walter's mother called him, "That boy." His brothers--there were more beside Stoffel--affirmed that he was treacherous and morose, because he spoke little and didn't care for "marbles." When he did say anything, they attributed to him a relationship with King Solomon's cat. His sisters declared he was a little devil. But Walter stood well with Leentje. She consoled him, and considered it disgraceful that the family didn't make more out of such a boy as Walter. She had seen that he was not a child like ordinary children. And I should scarcely take the trouble to write his story if he had been.