“What’s that?” he cried suddenly. “Does she answer? Is that imagination, too?”
Actually, Walter heard his name called, and it was Femke’s voice!
“I must know whether I’m dreaming, or not,” he said, and straightened himself up in bed. “That is a red flower, that is a black one, I am Walter, Laurens is a printer’s apprentice—everything is all right; and I’m not dreaming.”
He leaned out of bed and listened again, his mouth and eyes as wide open as he could get them, as if the senses of taste and sight were going to reinforce that of hearing.
“O, God! Femke’s voice! Yes, yes, it is Femke!” He jumped out of bed, ran out the door, and half ran, half fell down the steps.
To return to Femke for a little while. She had expected Walter at the bridge the next day after the story of the sun-worshipers. At first she thought that Walter was waiting till he could borrow from Stoffel the book with the picture showing Aztalpa embracing the two brothers. She wanted to see Walter with the picture; now she would have been satisfied with him without the picture. It couldn’t be the boy’s person, she thought—such a child!—but he did recite so well. Perhaps in the heart of the girl Walter and his recitals had already coalesced.
“Put the clothes in the sun,” cried her mother; and Femke translated that: Sun—Peru—Aztalpa—Kusco—Walter.
“Run those fighters away; they’ll throw dirt on the clothes.”
Femke dreamed: Courageously fighting against the enemies of the country—the noblest tribe of the Incas—Telasco—Walter.
Everything seemed to be calling for Walter; but he did not come.