Kneirtje.
[Submissive voice.] I leave it to the gentlemen themselves—to do for me—the gentlemen——
Bos.
It will be a tussle with the Committee—the committee of the fund—your son had been in prison and sang revolutionary songs. And your niece who——However, I will do my best. I shall recommend you, but I can’t promise anything. There are seven new families, awaiting aid, sixteen new orphans. [Rising and closing the safe.] No, sit awhile longer. My wife wants to give you something to take home with you. [Exits.]
Mathilde.
[Invisible.] Kaps! Kaps! [The bookkeeper rises, disappears for a moment, and returns with a dish and an enamelled pan.]
Kaps.
[Kindly.] If you will return the dish when it’s convenient, and if you’ll come again Saturday, to do the cleaning. [She stares vacantly. He closes her nerveless hands about the dish and pan; shuffles back to his stool. A silence. Kneirtje sits motionless, in dazed agony; mumbles—moves her lips—rises with difficulty, stumbles out of the office.]
Kaps.
[Taking up sheet of paper from desk.] Appeal, for the newspapers! [Smiling sardonically, he comes to the foreground; leaning on Bos’s desk, he reads.] “Benevolent Fellow Countrymen: Again we urge upon your generosity an appeal in behalf of a number of destitute widows and orphans. The lugger Good Hope——[As he continues reading.]