“Oh, if only we had never gone back to Holland! If, when Brussels became so dull, we had just moved to a town like Nice. It’s delightful there. As a foreigner, you need have nothing to trouble about, you can do just as you like, know just whom you please. You feel so free, so free.... And why, I thought, must Addie become and remain a Dutchman? He could just as well be a Frenchman ... or a cosmopolitan....”
“Thank you, Mamma: I don’t feel like being a Frenchman, nor yet a cosmopolitan. And you’d better not say that to Uncle Gerrit, or you can look out for squalls.”
“Addie, I’ve met with so many squalls in my dear Holland that I feel like blowing away myself, away from everybody....”
“Including your son?”
“No, my boy. I missed you. I thought of you every day. I am so glad to see you again. But I did think to myself that we should have done better never to come back to Holland.”
“Yes,” said Van der Welcke, thoughtfully.
“We could have lived at Nice, if we liked.”
“Yes,” Van der Welcke admitted, a little dubiously, “but you were longing for your family.”
She clenched her little hand and struck the table with it:
“And you!” she cried. “Didn’t you long for your parents, for your country?”