"As if you were afraid some one would slap you. Is Frederik ever unkind to you?"
"No," denied the boy, in scared haste. "No, he never is. He—he doesn't notice me at all. That's what I was going to say. He doesn't seem to care to. But he likes to be with Kathrien, I think. Yes, I'm sure he does. I think Kathrien missed you, too, Mr. Hartmann."
The big man grew of a sudden vaguely embarrassed. He cast back along the trail of the talk for some divergent path, and found one.
"Yes," he said, "it's good to be back from New York. The city always seems to cramp me and make it hard for me to breathe. The pavements hurt my feet and I have a silly feeling as though the skyscrapers were going to topple inward."
He was talking to himself rather than to the boy. But Willem rejoined sympathetically:
"I don't like New York City either."
"You, why you surely can't remember when you used to live there?"
The boy's fair brow creased in an effort of memory.
"Sometimes," he hesitated, "I can. And sometimes I don't seem able to. But I remember Anne Marie. She cried."
"How is Mynheer Peter?" demanded Hartmann with galvanic suddenness. "And how are that last lot of Madonna lilies coming on? They ought to be——"