"Alex! Guy! Take care: Auntie's good cloak!... Boys, do take care: Auntie's beautiful hat!"
But neither Alex nor Guy had any regard for Auntie's good cloak or Auntie's beautiful hat; and Constance was so weak in their rather rough and disrespectful embrace that she only laughed and laughed and laughed. Oh, sunshine, sunshine at last! Passionately fond as she was of her own big son, this was what she needed in these days of rain and gloomy skies and gloomy feelings: this almost overwhelming sunshine, this almost pitiless blaze of radiant youth; this rough gambolling around her of what was young and healthy and bright, as if the shock brought her out of her gloomy depression....
When the boys, after behaving like young dogs jumping up to kiss her face, were at last satisfied, she and sober Marietje looked all through the house for Gerdy and Constant, who had purposely hidden themselves and who, she knew, had crept behind the slanting sofa in the drawing-room. She would not find them too quickly, wished to prolong their enjoyment, called out in the drawing-room:
"But where can they be? Wherever can they be? Constant! Gerdy!..."
Then at last the giggles of the little brother and sister behind the sofa made her look over the back:
Oh, how young those children were! Excepting wise and sedate Marietje--Mamma's help--and perhaps quiet Adèletje, how young they were! Those two rascals, what children they were for their eleven and ten years! That little father-and-mother pair, Gerdy and Constant, what babies for their nine and eight! And then the nursery proper, Jan tyrannizing over Piet and Klaasje!... How pink and young and fresh and sunny it all was!... Now those were real children, even though Klaasje's laugh was very dull and silly. She had never known Addie like that. Addie had never had that sort of youth. No, his childhood had been spent amid the outbursts of temper of his father and mother, amid their jealousies, amid scenes and tears, so that the child had never been a child. And yet ... and yet, though he had grown up early, how well he had taken care of himself and what kindly powers had watched over him, making him into their one great joy and happiness and consolation!...