amma and keep house for Mamma and look after Mamma and spoil Mamma.
But, as a girl of twenty-two, she had left home to become a nurse; and,
when she found that she had mistaken her vocation, Mamma had refused to
let her come back. But surely, Mamma, who was so fond of gathering all
her children round her, the friends would say. Yes, that was so, said
Dorine: Mamma doted on her brood; and yet she preferred to be alone in
her big house, she preferred to do her housekeeping herself and did not
care to have any one staying with her or fussing about her.... No, it
was better that Dorine should stop in her boarding-house. Mamma was
still so active, saw to everything, knew about everything. Dorine would
have been of no use to her at home.... Besides, Mamma herself wouldn't
hear of it, and used to say, laughingly, but quite in earnest:

"Those who go away can stay away...."

And the Van Lowes' friends thought it odd, for the old lady was known
for just that motherly quality of hers, for loving to keep all her
children round her, in a close family-circle, at the Hague or in the
immediate neighbourhood. And she did not look at all a difficult old
lady, with her gentle, refined old face of a waxy pallor and her smooth
grey hair; not at all a managing old dame who could not possibly live in
the same house with her unmarried daughter. And so Dorine was always a
little perplexed at having to explain, especially as she herself thought
it odd of Mamma. But Mamma was what she was; and it couldn't be
helped....

* * * * *

Dorine felt less tired after she had had some dinner and changed her
clothes; and she put on her goloshes and went on to Mamma's at once. The
rawness of the March evening bore down on the deserted Javastraat with a
shudder of dripping fog. It had rained all day; and now the heavy grey
sky was blotted from sight in a mist that clung in masses of woolly
dampness to the roofs and tree-tops; the wind whistled from the
north-west and skimmed over the rippling puddles; the trees dripped as
heavily as though it were still raining; and the pale-yellow light in
the clouded street-lamps shimmered down upon the street. Hardly any one
was out of doors so early after dinner; a man, carrying a parcel, left a
shop and shuffled close to the houses, with wide, hurrying legs.

Dorine tripped across the puddles in her goloshes, hugging herself in
her old-fashioned, long fur cloak. And she talked to hers