Walter blew out the light—no, he was on the point of blowing it out. He had selected one of the triangles that Laurens had described in the bed, when suddenly he became aware of a great tumult in the Pieterse home.
Yes, somebody had rung violently three or four times and was still banging at the door. Fire?
Hm! Could it be Princess Erika, he thought, who was coming to change places with him?
Alas, it was only Juffrouw Laps; and she did not come to exchange.
Well, what did she want then, so late in the evening?
Walter pulled himself together and listened.
The compartment where Walter and Laurens slept was a boxed-up arrangement over the sitting-room. Two of their sisters shared the space with them. From considerations of modesty, therefore, the boys always had to get sleepy a quarter of an hour before the young ladies.
The writer is unable to say how much oxygen four young people need during eight hours without suffocating; but anyway there wasn’t much room in this little nook.
In another closet-affair there was a similar division, and here, too, the hour for retiring was determined by similar laws of modesty.
The reader will now understand why a part of the family, the female part of course, was still in the sitting-room when Walter imagined that Princess Erika had come to exchange places with him.