The cab came; and Aunt Stefanie, in a very old fur cloak, hoisted herself in, sprightlily, climbed up the step and felt anything but well. Was it coming at last? Was she about to fall ill and die? Oh, if she could only be sure of going to Heaven! So long as she was not sure of it, she would rather go on living, rather grow as old as Mother and Takma, rather live to be a hundred. The cab was now pulling up in front of the ground-floor rooms in which Anton lived; and she thought, should she wait till he came out or should she get out herself for a minute? She resolved upon the latter course and, when the door was opened by the landlady, she clambered down the step of the cab again, refusing the driver's assistance, and, with a few snowflakes on her old-lady's cape and old fur cloak, went in to her brother, who was sitting beside a closed stove, with his book and his pipe. A thick haze of smoke filled the room, drifting heavily with slow, horizontal cloud-lines.
"Well, Anton, you're expecting me, aren't you? It wouldn't be the thing if you weren't!" said Aunt Stefanie, in a tone of reproach.
Trippingly and imperiously, she went up to him. Her voice sounded shrill and her little witch-face shook and shivered out of the worn fur collar of her cloak, because she felt cold.
"Yes, all right," said Anton Dercksz, but without getting up. "You'll sit down first, won't you, Stefanie?"
"But the cab's waiting, Anton; it means throwing money away for nothing!"
"Well, that won't ruin you. Is it really necessary that we should go and look at those brats?"
"You must see your godchild, surely. That's only proper. And then we're going on, with Ina and Lily, to Daan and Floor, at their hotel."
"Yes, I know, they arrived yesterday.... Look here, Stefanie, I can't understand why you don't leave me here in peace. You always want to boss people. I'm comfortable here, reading...."
The warmth of the stove gave old Stefanie de Laders a blissful feeling; she held her numbed feet—Anton possessed no foot-stove—voluptuously to the glow; but the smoke of the pipe made her cough.
"Yes, yes, you're just sitting reading; I read too, but I read better books than you.... Let me see what you're reading, Anton. What is it? Latin?"