“I?” cried Walter abashed.
“Study hard and be the first in school inside the next three months,” said Femke to the conqueror of continents, unaware of the sarcasm that lay in her words. “Otherwise, you see, my mother might think I had made fun of you; and I don’t want that to happen. If you will only do that——”
“I will do it, Femke!”
“Then you must go home and begin at once.”
Thus she sent him away. As she told him “Good-bye” she noticed all at once that he was too large for her to kiss. A few hours later, when Father Jansen was calling on her mother and incidentally saw Walter’s painting, Walter suddenly became a child again. The priest had said that in Dutch Ophelia meant Flora, who was the patron-saint of roses and forget-me-nots.
“Oh, that picture is from a little boy, a very small boy. He’s about ten years old—or nine. He’s certainly not older than nine!”
“Girl, you are foolish!” cried the mother. “The boy is fifteen.”
“Yes, that may be—but I just meant that he’s still only a child.”
She stuck Ophelia away in some hidden nook, and Mrs. Claus and Father Jansen never saw that new edition of the old flower-goddess again.
“Femke, I will do it!” Walter had said.