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go with the fishing-rod he had made himself and sit
on the bank of the Outer Spaarne, cut up a worm for
bait, and wait with a glowing face. Here sometimes
real blood was shed on the ground. Perhaps he
might bring a perch home with its gills slit open.
These were his games for a long time, a whole spring
and summer, a time that made a deep impression on
his mind. He gave no thought to the people at
home ; even his mother was only a figure in the
bedroom or on her chair.
Once when he was standing looking at the turtle-
dove, he saw a gentleman in a tall hat going up the
stairs, Jansje said it was the doctor. His mother
came down again, but from that day on he never
saw her behind the counter, always in her armchair
by the window beneath the fuchsia. By day she
kept her eyes fixed on the wall above the kitchen,
in the evening she stared into the lamp, he rarely
heard her say anything. There must have been
something queer about her, for anybody who came
into the room, one of his uncles, Jansje or the assist-
ant, looked at her, and he had once asked why she
had blue lips. When the Fair was over, when it
rained long hours on end and the leaves were falling
in the Old Gracht, he went back to school and no
longer looked at her.
Agnete's voice was never heard. Frans believed
that she sat thinking all the time, but Gerbrand
shook his head, and said that couldn't be it. ' It is,