Inwardly proud of the cloak, she bit the last word into Ina's face, rolling her r's as she did so. They all three sat down and Anna thought it so pleasant of them that she brought in some brandy-cherries, three glasses on a tray:
"Or would you rather have tea, Mrs. Ina?"
"No, Anna, your cherries are delicious."
The servant went away, glad, happy at the bustle on the ground-floor, to which the old lady no longer ever descended. That ground-floor was her kingdom, where not even the companion held sway, where she, Anna, alone held sway, receiving the family and offering refreshments.
Ina tasted a cherry, was sorry that Aunt Floor had joined them in the morning-room. It was quite possible that the old doctor, a younger contemporary of Grandmamma's, knew something; but it was not certain. For Uncle Daan himself had only known it such a little while, though Papa had known it for sixty years. Sixty years! The length of that past hypnotized her. Sixty years ago, that old ailing doctor—who had given up practice and now merely kept Grandmamma and Mr. Takma going, with the aid of a younger colleague—was a young man of twenty-eight, newly-arrived in Java, one of Grandmamma's many adorers.
She saw it before her and tried to see farther into it; her curiosity, like a powerful lens, burnt and revealed a vista in front of her, gleaming with new light, through the opaque denseness of the past. And she began:
"Poor Papa is not at all well. I'm afraid he's going to be ill. He is so depressed mentally too. Yes, Aunt, he has been more depressed, mentally, since he saw Uncle Daan again than I have known him for years. What can it be? It can't be money-matters...."
"No, my dear, it's not money-matters, though we're still as poor as r-r-rats."
"Then what has brought Uncle Daan to Holland?" asked Ina, suddenly and quickly.
Aunt Floor looked at her stupidly: