"Have you enough to get there with?"
"Yes. I've enough for that."
Great was the indignation in the Roodhuis and Van Tijn households when they heard of the event. Sentimentality, the enjoyment of the sensational, and attachment to tradition—all this so moved the good women that their meagre purses contributed, without delay, three gulden and twenty-four cents.
In the meantime Johannes dragged himself to Dolores' villa. In the drawing-room, beside a brightly flaming wood fire, sat Van Lieverlee engaged in lively conversation with two young-lady callers, for whom the countess was pouring tea. Into this circle came Johannes, with his sad heart and his lugubrious petition.
He entered hurriedly, awkwardly, abruptly, without heeding the astonished and disdainful looks of the visitors, nor the very evident consternation which his poverty-stricken appearance, his untoward entrance, and his melancholy tidings made upon host and hostess.
"But, Johannes," said Van Lieverlee, "I thought you were more philosophical and had higher ideas than that. It seems to me that—for your friend who claimed to be a magician, and for yourself who believed in him—it makes a sad lot of bother what happens to the dust out of which his temporal presence was formed."
"I thought," replied Johannes, "that as you are now a Catholic, you might perhaps feel that you could do something for...."
"Certainly," said Van Lieverlee, scornfully, "if your friend also were a Catholic. Was he?"
"No, Mijnheer," replied Johannes.