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He took more interest in what Frans told him and
asked him questions, too, about the peculiarities of
the houses or streets, why the Market was called
the Sand and how Jacobijnstraat had got its name.
They stood such a long time with their faces raised,
looking at a gable, that people stared at them. When
they met Meier, the blind man, tapping along the
doors with his stick, Frans gave him a cent. Then
Floris looked into his purse and saw how little he had
in it, not more than one ten-cent piece and a few
cents. c Why have you so little money ? ' he asked
him once. * That's not little/ said Frans; ' it's
more than enough, for I never have to buy anything.3
Floris thought it odd ; in his class at school there
were boys who had more than that for pocket-money
and Uncle Frans was over thirty years old.
Their walks always led them to the Church in the
Vegetable Market and the Belfry Square, and always
Frans looked up at the Tower. Once the idea came
to Floris, as he looked at him, that perhaps he was
not quite right in the head. He could talk of
nothing else but the houses in the town and the bells
in the Tower ; and he obeyed the other uncle just
as though he were a child. From that day he
watched him, and the tone in which he spoke to him
changed.
Since his fall Frans had made a habit of going up
to his room as soon as he had finished his dinner, and
then Stien would go up and attend to the bandage