“May I see some of your New Year’s cards, like those in your [[85]]window?” she asked the shopkeeper. “Don’t touch those statuettes, Ben.”
A number of cards were shown her. She looked at them attentively, took them up with the tips of her well-gloved fingers, and laid a few aside. Then she looked round her, noticed a heap of portraits, and with her languid indifference she took them up. Fabrice’s were among them.
Which should she take? This melancholy-looking one in the black velvet costume and lace collar, representing Hamlet; that one as Tell? No, this one, as Ben-Saïd, the character in which she had first seen him. But she would also take that one of Moulinat, the tenor, and of Estelle Desveaux, the contralto; then it would not be remarked that she had come expressly for Fabrice. But then she might just as well take another of Fabrice, as Hamlet.
“Will you let me have these cards, and these four portraits?”
“Shall I send them to you?”
“Oh no, I will take them. How much is it altogether?”
She paid the money, took the envelope in which the shopman had enclosed them, and left the shop with Ben, under the firm impression that the ladies, who were still engaged with the photographs, looked at her as though they would read her inmost thoughts.
A glow of pleasure came over Eline’s face when once she was outside. At last she had summoned up courage to do what she had long determined, and she spoke in a gentle motherly way to Ben. And when, on reaching the Hoogstraat, she saw Jeanne Ferelyn in her winter cloak, wide as a sack, and her modest little black hat, walking on the opposite side without noticing her, she took Ben’s hand, and quickly crossing the street between two carriages, greeted Jeanne with smiling cordiality. They walked on a few steps together, Jeanne telling her that Dora was getting on nicely, but that she had been obliged to engage a nursemaid, as she could not always leave the children to the care of Mietje, who was so slovenly and careless, and that it had somewhat crippled her finances. Eline forced herself to be attentive to the tale of her latest troubles; but soon Jeanne began to speak with more animation about Frans, her father, and Doctor Reyer, with whom she was getting on better now. Then as she saw how sympathetically Eline looked at her, and how gently she spoke to Ben, she raked [[86]]up some of the recollections of her school-days, and they laughed about their childish pranks, and about the cherries she used to pick out of Eline’s cape. Jeanne was annoyed at herself for having formed such an unfavourable impression of Eline when she met her at the van Raats’ dinner-party; now she found her quite unaffected and amiable.
“But don’t let me detain you any longer, Eline,” said she, stopping short; “I have to make a few trifling purchases, order some saucepans, and a milk-jug. Mietje has been breaking some things.”
“Oh! I have nothing to do, I’ll walk with you so far, if you don’t think I’m de trop, and if Ben isn’t tired. Are you tired, little man? No, eh? Oh! he is such a good one at walking!”