I will know all of that some day, Walter thought. If he could have only quieted himself so well about his poem! If that were only written, he thought, then he would clear up the lost causes of everything. In the meanwhile he dreamed of Femke, of her blue eyes, her friendliness, her soft lips—and of her voice, when she said, “You are a dear, sweet boy.”
Could it be that she is Omicron? he thought.
And thus the child dreamed, dreamed; and, just as in the development of humanity, in his life was working a three-fold impulse, towards love, knowledge, and conflict.
“But Walter, don’t you read any books at home about the creed?”
Thus Femke questioned her little friend the next day, as he sat on her basket again.
“Yes, but they’re not pretty.”
“Don’t you know anything by heart?”
Walter repeated a stanza of a reformed church hymn. This found no favor with Femke; though she liked his reciting.
“Don’t you read anything else?”
Walter reflected: he flew through Stoffel’s library—works of the Poetical Society, Geology by Ippel, On Orthography, Regulations for the Fire-Watch, Story of Joseph by Hulshoff, Brave Henry, Jacob Among His Children, Sermons by Hellendoorn, A Catechism by the same, Hoorn’s Song-book.