also many in number. The dairy, with its cart filled with polished
copper cans, rang at every door; and notable for its ostentatious
neatness was a van conveying beer in cans: the driver, who was
constantly getting down and ringing, wore a sort of brown shooting-suit,
with top-boots and a motor-cap; the cart was painted with earthenware
cans swelling out in relief from the panels. A barrel-organ quavered on,
playing a very doleful tune: the organ-man ground out a bit of
dolefulness, stopped and then pushed on again; his old woman rang at
every door, put the coppers she received in her pocket, as if she were
collecting so many debts. Each time, the maids, in their lilac-print
dresses, appeared at the doors, or leant out and looked from the open
windows of the bedrooms, or called out and flung down the rich man's
dole of coppers. Domestic economy filled the street, while the wind, the
blundering, mighty wind, blew on. A gentleman passed on his way to his
office, hugging a portfolio. Two girls flew by on bicycles; a lady
hurried along on some urgent errand. But, for the rest, there was
nothing but the economy of eating and drinking. It filled the street, it
rang and rang and rang until all the houses chimed with the ringing. And
the houses took in their supplies, the street grew quiet: only the wind
blew the young chestnut-leaves to pieces and the flagstaffs groaned on
their creaking, gouty pins....

Marietje turned away. She was a pale, fair-haired little thing of
sixteen, with pale-blue eyes and a white, bloodless skin. Her hair,
brushed off her forehead, was already done up behind into a knob. She
wore a little pinafore to protect her frock. And now she sat down at the
piano and began to tap out her scales.

The room in which Marietje was practising was the drawing-room. It was a
fairly large room on the first floor, but it was so terribly crammed
with furniture, arranged in studied confusion, with an affectation of
elegance, that there was hardly space to move about or sit. On the backs
of all the chairs hung fancy antimacassars, flattened by the pressure of
reclining forms, with faded and crumpled ribbons. On all sorts of little
tables stood nameless ornaments: little earthenware dogs and china
smelling-bottles, set out as in a tenpenny bazaar. The wall-paper
displayed big flowers, the carpet more big flowers, of a different
species, while on the curtains blossomed a third kind of flower; and the
colours of all thes