Mathilde came into the hall, leading Nico and Lientje by the hand.
“Just fancy, there was mamma, quietly playing at tea-parties with Tine,” she said, and her despairing face made Otto smile. “Really if it were midnight, mamma would——”
“Ma, dear, mustn’t we say good-night first to everybody?” screamed Johan.
“No, no!” cried Mathilde, quite terrified, and grasped the little [[79]]hands close; “I shall wish all the people good-night for you. Thank you, Otto.”
She gave him a friendly nod, and he nodded back with his genial smile and his frank eyes.
And Mathilde took the children up-stairs.
“Then you can bear all that noise and turmoil?” asked old Madame van Raat of Madame van Erlevoort, and she looked at her smilingly, but wondering, with her sad, lack-lustre eyes.
There was a sudden calm after the exodus of the children. They left the dining-room, where the toys were still scattered about; the apartment was closed, and the guests went into the double drawing-room, where Madame van Erlevoort poured out tea.
“Can I bear it, madam? I feel myself live again under it; it rejuvenates me. I need the life of youth about me. I never spent a drearier time than when my daughters and my son Théodore were married, and yet I still had three children left me. But I must see those little beings fluttering about me; there is nothing that keeps one in a brighter condition like their wild gaiety. May I pour you out another cup?”
Madame van Raat handed her cup, and envied Madame van Erlevoort her youthful vivacity with her gray hairs. She compared her with herself, and her own melancholy solitude, the effect of which she felt doubly keen, after her former life of cloudless happiness, and her present existence stood out in cruel contrast to the joy-surrounded old age of that happy grandmamma.