"The children are upstairs," he said.
"Yes, I know," said Ottilie. "That's why I'm waiting; it would be too much for Mamma otherwise ..."
"Well-well-well," muttered the old doctor.
He sat huddled in a chair, a shapeless mass of dropsical obesity: his one stiff leg was stuck out straight in front of him and his paunch hung sideways over it in curving lines; his face, clean-shaven but bunched into wrinkles, was like the face of a very old monk; his thin grey hair looked as if it were moth-eaten and hung in frayed wisps from his skull, which was shaped like a globe, with a vein at one temple meandering in high relief; he lisped and muttered exclamation upon exclamation; his watery eyes swam behind gold spectacles.
"Well-well-well, Ottilie, so your Lot is getting married at last!..."
He was eighty-eight, the doctor, the last surviving contemporary of Grandmamma and Mr. Takma; he had brought Ottilie Steyn into the world, in Java, at a time when he was a young doctor, not long since arrived from Holland; and he called her either by her Christian name or "child."
"At last?" cried Ottilie, in a vexed tone. "It's early enough for me!"
"Yes-yes-yes, yes-yes, child; you'll miss him, you'll miss your boy, I daresay.... Still, they'll make a nice couple, he and Elly, well-well, yes-yes-yes, working together, artistic, yes, well.... That good old Anna hasn't started her fires yet! This room's warm, but upstairs, yes-yes, it's very chilly.... Takma's always blazing hot inside, eh-eh? Well-well! Mamma likes a cool room too; well-well, cool: cold, I call it. I consider it warmer in here: ay-ay, it is warmer down here. Well-well!... Mamma wasn't so well, child, yesterday...."
"Come, doctor," said Anton Dercksz, "you'll make Mamma see a hundred yet!"
And he buttoned up his coat and went away, satisfied at having performed his filial duty for that week.