“Why, certainly—what they did? I am going to tell you. I’m still trembling. I had sliced my potatoes, put them on a saucer and set them away in the cupboard. Then I thought, I will fry them when I come home; for I didn’t expect to stay long in the crowd, for I have been saved by grace and don’t care for worldly things—ah, dear Juffrouw Pieterse, you must call Stoffel, so he can hear what has happened.”
Stoffel was already on his way down; and Walter was glad of it. Walter had heard the noise Stoffel was making putting on his clothes in the adjoining booth, and upon this he builded hopes that he too might be allowed to go down, where he could hear the exciting story better than was possible through the cracks in the floor. In the meantime he had completely dressed himself. The noises below told him of Stoffel’s arrival in the sitting-room. He heard the usual greetings and Juffrouw Laps’s solemn assurance that she was still in such a tremble that she couldn’t say a word. Then he heard her ask immediately where Laurens was.
Laurens? Well, he was asleep.
That youth’s absence seemed to trouble the visitor. She couldn’t proceed. Was it really necessary for Laurens to be present?
“What do you say, Stoffel? Isn’t the city full of thieves and murderers?”
Stoffel drew in his upper lip and tried to make the lower one touch his nose. Let the reader try the same; then he will know how Stoffel answered, and what his answer meant.
Juffrouw Laps pretended to believe that he had said “yes.”
“Don’t you see, Stoffel says so too! The city is full of thieves and murderers, and—a respectable person is afraid to go to bed alone any more. It’s just that way.”
“But—Juffrouw!”
“The police? Nonsense! What good do the police do, when people don’t believe in God? That’s the truth. Whoever doesn’t do that is lost. Human help—I cannot understand at all why Laurens goes to bed so early. You surely know that so much sleep isn’t good for anybody. What does the Bible say? Watch and pray! But—everyone according to his notion. I swear before God that I don’t dare to go home alone and——”