"This is Aunt Constance, who has come to make your acquaintance, Frances. But Frances, you're still in your sarong and kabaai!"[16]
"Isn't that allowed, Granny? How d'ye do, Aunt?"
"Child, how Indian you've become in these few years!" cried the old lady, angrier than Constance remembered ever seeing her. "How is it possible, how is it possible! Have you forgotten Holland? In March, with the window open, in a tearing draught, with both the children, you in sarong and kabaai and Huig in a little shirt! Do you want to kill yourself and the children? Baboe, put a baadje on sinjo![17] Frances, Frances, I spent years and years in India, but even in India I was nearly always dressed; and, when I came back to Holland, I had not forgotten Holland in the way in which you, a purely Dutch girl, have forgotten it in these few years!"
The old woman had taken the child on her own lap and was dressing it more warmly.
"Grandmamma, how you're grumbling.... It'd be better if you told cook to make Ottelientje's boeboer[18] properly: the child can't eat that starch they give her. And she told baboe that she had no time to cook it differently. The whole house has gone mad because Emilie is getting married. We really can't stay here, on the top floor at Papa and Mamma's."
"Frances, dress yourself first, or I shall get really angry."
"Allah, Grandmamma!" cried Frances, irritably; but, when Constance gave her the same advice, she flung a wrapper over her sarong and kabaai and remained like that, with her bare feet in slippers.
"No wonder you're always ill!" grumbled Grandmamma, still busying herself with the child.
"Oh, Aunt Constance, I wonder if you would run down to the kitchen and tell cook that Ottelientje can't have her boeboer made like that?"
"My dear Frances," laughed Constance, "the cook has never seen me, nor I her: and, if I went to her kitchen and talked about the boeboer, she would only turn me out."