"Oh, your little girl!... Is she here too?"
"Yes, would you like to see her presently?"
"Yes, I want to see them both.... Both together, together...."
The little boy, hushed, looked with wondering earnestness at the wrinkled face, looked with a wavering glance of reflection and amazement, but did not cry; and, even when the slender, wand-like finger tickled him on his cheek, Lily was able to hush him and keep him from crying. It was a diversion too when Ina came upstairs with Netta on her arm: a bundle of white and a little pink patch for a face and two little drops of turquoise eyes, with a moist little munching mouth; and Lily was afraid that the little boy would start screaming and handed him to the nurse at the door: fortunately, for on the landing he opened his throat lustily, greatly perturbed in his baby brain by his first sight of great age. But the bundle of white and the little pink patch with the two little drops of turquoise munched away contentedly with the moist little mouth and was even better-behaved than Stefje had been, so well-behaved indeed that the old woman was allowed to take it for a moment in her deep lap, though Lily remained on her guard and kept her hands under it.
"That's made me very happy, dear," said the old woman, "to have seen my great-great-grandchildren. Yes, Stefje is a fine little man ... and Netta is a darling, Netta is a darling...."
It was time to say good-bye; and Lily carried off the pink-patched bundle of white, saying, in her laughing, young-motherly way, that the children must go home. Ina sat down.
"It has really made me happy," the old woman repeated, "to have seen that young life. For I have been very sad lately, Ina. It must be quite ten days since I saw Mr. Takma."
"No, Granny, it's not so long as that."
"How long has he been ill then?"
"Six days, seven perhaps."