Well—I don’t hold with compliments. A principal is a different matter, and I have been in business long enough to know what I am about; but I didn’t think it necessary to use much ceremony in a third-floor back. So I said, without more ado, that I was Mijnheer Droogstoppel, coffee-broker, Lauriergracht, No. 37, and I wanted to see her husband. Well—and why should I have made any more fuss about it?
She offered me a rush-bottomed chair, and took a little girl on her lap, who was sitting on the ground playing. The little boy, whom I had heard singing, looked full at me, and stared at me from top to toe. He, too, did not seem in the least embarrassed. He was a little chap of about six, as queerly dressed as his mother. He had on a wide pair of knickerbockers that did not come down to the knees; and his legs were bare from there to the ankle. Very indecent, I think. “Have you come to talk to papa?” he asked, in a way which showed me at once that his upbringing was not at all what it ought to be. But because I did not quite know what attitude to take up, and also wanted to talk a little, I answered, “Yes, my little fellow, I want to talk to your papa. Do you think he will be coming in soon?”
“I don’t know; he’s gone out to look for some money to buy me a paint-box.”
“Hush, my boy,” said the woman. “Play with the pictures a little, or with your Chinese puzzle-box.”
“Why, you know the gentleman came and took all the things away yesterday.”
So that was the way he spoke to his mother—h’m! ... and there had been “a gentleman,” it appeared, to “take everything away.” ... Cheerful visit, this! The woman, too, did not look in good spirits; she turned away and wiped her eyes, when she thought I could not see her, as she put the little girl down on the floor beside her brother. “There,” she said, “now play with Nonnie a little.” An extraordinary name for a child.
“Well, Juffrouw,” I asked, “do you expect your husband in soon?”
“I cannot say for certain,” she answered.
At this the little boy suddenly left his sister, came up to me, and asked,
“Sir, why do you call mamma Juffrouw?”[[10]]