The old lady was sitting silently at the window—in the grey morning, which seemed spent and weary with the wind out of doors—and her thoughts were following a far course of their own in misty days of long ago. Klaasje came up to her. The child had two heavy books under her arm, bound volumes of The Graphic and L'Illustration, and walked bent under them; then she dropped them, clumsily.... Cross with the weight of the books, she beat them angrily, but the hard boards hurt her little hand; and so she decided to drag them to Granny, the naughty books which refused to come: she dragged them by the open bindings which had hurt her so; she tore them a bit, but that was their own fault, because they wouldn't be carried.... Satisfied with her revenge in tearing the books, she closed the bindings contentedly; the books lay at Granny's feet, against her foot-warmer; and now Klaasje dragged up a hassock too, pushed it against Granny's dress and, kneeling on the hassock, asked Granny, in a motherly fashion:
"Granny!... Granny!... Granny like to look at pictures?"
The old woman, with a vague, misty glance, slowly turned her head towards the child, whose fair hair fell loosely round the rather thin, sharp little face, from which the over-bright eyes shone strangely, hard and staring. The voice—"Granny look at pictures?"—rang strangely kind, but too childish for a big girl of twelve, with a maturing figure. It was too maternal towards the old woman:
"Granny!... Granny like to look at pictures?"
The old woman, vaguely, fancied herself at Buitenzorg, in a large white palace among mountains, which stood out against a blue sky, and coco-trees, which waved gently like ostrich-feathers; and she thought that her little daughter Gertrude was kneeling by her and wanting to look at the books with her. Her old mouth wore a little puckered smile; and she put out her hands for the book, which Klaasje held up clumsily. But the old woman was too weak to pull the heavy book on to her lap and it slipped obstinately down her dress to the floor, against the foot-warmer. Klaasje grew angry:
"Naughty books, naughty books!..."
She flew into a temper and struck the books again; but her little hand was hurt and she suddenly began to cry.
"Ssh!... Ssh!..." said Granny, soothingly.
She bent painfully in her big chair and laboriously pulled up the heavy, obstinate book; and Klaasje, with her eyes still wet, pushed up from below, till at last it lay in Grandmamma's lap. Then Klaasje sighed, after the final victory:
"Turn over," she said.