"I have to work, Papa."
"Aren't you coming for a cycle-ride with me first?"
"For an hour, Papa, that's all."
And it was always as though the parents, almost stupidly, kept the child from working, happy as long as he sat with him or her, walked with her or cycled with him. It was so many favours that he granted; and he granted them not as a spoilt child, but as a man: he divided his precious time systematically between his work and his father and mother, conscientiously allotting what was due to each. And Constance would have a moment of faint, smiling pride, as though in a victory gained, when the boy went out with her in the afternoon.
"Addie, must you always wear that hat?"
Then, to please her, he did not wear his Boer hat, but a bowler, so as to look nice when walking with Mamma. And she relaxed, talked to him; and he laughed back; and she could just take his arm and walked with evident pride on the arm of her little son. Paul always said that she flirted with him.... Then Van der Welcke, having nothing to keep him indoors, went out, went to the Witte, looked up his old friends: young fellows of the old days, but now, for the most part, portly gentlemen, filling important posts; he no longer felt at home with them, even when they talked of the days long past: Leiden, their youthful escapades, their young years. He felt, when with these men who filled important posts, that his life was spoilt, thanks to an irrevocable fault. And disconsolately he came home, from the Witte or from the Plaats, and was a little gloomy at dinner, until Addie succeeded in cheering him up. Then, looking more brightly out of his frank, young, blue eyes, Van der Welcke asked:
"Addie, my boy, what are you doing this evening?"
He asked it as one asks a grown-up person, who makes an appointment or has an engagement; and the lad answered:
"I have to work, Papa."
"Aren't you going for a ride with me first?"