r not
when Grandmamma offered him a second sandwich; but he took it, because
otherwise he would not have known what to do with his hands. He sat like
a small, stiff little boy, shyly; and, when he looked up at his father,
it seemed to him that he too was sitting as if he had eaten his sandwich
too fast. Grandmamma herself buttered his bread for him and offered it
to him, ready cut into strips. He ate the narrow fingers with a great
effort at self-control.

It lasted endlessly long; and the table remained white, bare and neat,
now that the sandwiches were finished; the empty coffee-cups gave the
only touch of untidiness: the broken, yellowy egg-shells Grandmamma had
put away on the sideboard. When they rose, Grandpapa asked Henri to come
and smoke a cigar in his study; Grandmamma stayed in the sitting-room
with Constance and Addie. On the road outside, the rain splashed in the
puddles.

Constance felt a stranger in this house. Nevertheless, her mood became
softer, because the old woman's eyes, in the stiff, silver-framed face,
were still sad and constantly filled with tears. She was very sensitive
to any emotion in another; and, though she fought against it, she
herself felt moved. She wanted to talk to this grandmother about her
grandson; and so she said how clever he was, how good to his parents.
Mrs. van der Welcke nodded good-naturedly, but continued to look upon
Addie as a child, while Constance was talking of him as man. The old
woman did not fully grasp the meaning of Constance' words, but the sound
of them increased her emotion. She called Addie to her side, said that
he must come and stay with them in the summer: it was delightful in the
country then, for games. The boy had it on his lips to say that his
parents could not do without him; but he felt that his words would sound
strange and elderly and priggish. And he only said, very prettily:

"I should like to, Grandmamma."

He played at being a little child, because Grandmamma happened to look
upon him as one. Really he was thinking of something very different,
thinking of the houses which he had seen yesterday with Papa and Mamma
and which his parents could not agree upon, in any particular: the
neighbourhood, the division of the rooms. Because he knew that the hotel
was expensive and that both Papa and Mamma would become less fidgety
once they had a house, he thought of cutting the Gordian knot and going
by himself to the owner of a nice house near the Wo