“Finally he didn’t dare go to the gate any more, for fear the keeper would get angry at him.”
“And then? What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Walter stuttered. “I don’t know what he ought to do to get to heaven.”
Walter knew the rest of the story very well, but he couldn’t put it into words. This was shown in a peculiar manner an hour later.
On the way home the party was almost run over by a wagon just as they were crossing a bridge. In the commotion Emma slipped under the railing and fell into the stream. Somebody screamed, and Walter sprang after her.
If he had died at that moment the keeper of the gate would hardly have turned him away because he didn’t know French and had not been confirmed.
When he was brought home, wet and dirty, Juffrouw Pieterse said that one ought not to tempt the Master, and that’s what one did when one jumped into the water without being able to swim.
But I find that the man who can’t swim is the very one to expect something of the Master; for the man who can swim has some prospect of helping himself.
And Juffrouw Pieterse complained that there was “always something the matter with that boy.” There was something the matter with him.