"Yes, you're always blazing hot inside!..."
Ottilie walked behind him, like a little child, and kissed her mother, very gently and carefully; and, when she went up to Takma afterwards, he pulled her hand, so that she might give him a kiss too.
[CHAPTER V]
Papa Dercksz had not left much behind him, but Stefanie de Laders, the only child of the first marriage, was a rich woman; and the reason why old Mamma had only a little left of her first husband's fortune was because she had never practised economy. Stefanie, however, had saved and put by, never knowing why, from an inherited proclivity for adding money to money. She lived in a small house in the Javastraat and was known in philanthropic circles, devoting herself prudently and thriftily to good works. Lot and Elly found Aunt at home: she rose from her chair, amidst a twittering of little birds in little cages, and she herself had something of a larger-sized little old bird: short, lean, shrivelled, tripping with little bird-like steps, restless, in spite of her years, with her narrow little shoulders and her bony hands, she was a very ugly little old woman, a little witch. Never having been married, devoid of passions, devoid of the vital flame, she had grown old unscathed in her little egoisms, with only one great fear, which had clung to her all her life: the fear of encountering Hell's terrors after her death, which, after all, was drawing nearer. And so she was very religious, convinced that Calvin knew all about it, for everybody and for all subsequent ages; and, trusting blindly in her faith, she read anything of this tendency on which she could lay hands, from paper-covered tracts to theological works, though she did not understand the latter, while the former left her full of shuddering.
"Quite a surprise, children!" Aunt Stefanie de Laders screamed, as though Lot and Elly were deaf. "And when are you getting married?"
"In three months, Aunt."
"In church?"
"I don't think so, Aunt," said Lot.
"I thought as much!"