“Mevrouw, it’s so late....”
“Not for us.”
“Come along, Max,” said Van der Welcke.
But Brauws laughed his queer, soft laugh and said:
“What’s the good of my coming in?...”
And he went off, with a shy bow. They all laughed.
“Really, Brauws is impossible,” said Van Vreeswijck, indignantly.
“And he’s forgotten to tell me at what time he’s coming for me with his old sewing-machine....”
But next day, very early, in the misty winter morning, the “machine” came puffing and snorting and exploding down the Kerkhoflaan and stopped at Van der Welcke’s door with a succession of deep-drawn sighs and spasmodic gasps, as if to take breath after its exertions; and this monster as it were of living and breathing iron, odorous of petrol—the acrid smell of its sweat—was soon surrounded by a little group of butchers’-boys and orange-hawkers. Brauws stepped out; and, as Constance happened to be coming downstairs, she received him.
“I’m not fit to be seen, mevrouw. In these ‘sewing-machines,’ as Hans calls them, one becomes unpresentable at once.”