Crazy! She would be capable of ruining my good name—with her boarding-school whims. Who ever comes now you send away, understand? Trash! Rabble! That whole set are no good! That damned drunkard! That fellow that stinks of gin! [Sound of Jelle’s fiddle outside.] That too? [At the window.] Go on! No, not a cent! [The music stops.] I am simply worn out. [Falls into his chair, takes up Clementine’s sketch book; spitefully turns the leaves; throws it on the floor; stoops, jerks out a couple of leaves, tears them up. Sits in thought a moment, then rings the telephone.] Hello! with Dirksen—Dirksen, I say, the underwriter! [Waits, looking sombre.] Hello! Are you there, Dirksen? It’s all up with the Good Hope. A hatch with my mark washed ashore and the body of a sailor. [Changing to quarrelsome tone.] What do you say? I should say not! No question of it! Sixty-two days! The probabilities are too small. [Calmer.] Good! I shall wait for you here at my office. But be quick about it! Yes, fourteen hundred guilders. Bejour. [Rings off; at the last words Kneirtje has entered.]
Kneirtje.
[Absently.] I——[She sinks on the bench, patiently weeping.]
Bos.
[At the safe, without seeing her.] Have you mislaid the policies? You never put a damn thing in its place.
Kaps.
[Pointing from his stool.] The policies are higher, behind the stocks.
Bos.
[Snappishly.] All right, shut your mouth, now! [Turning around with the policies in his hand.] Why don’t you knock?