?"

"Herman wants to know if you're going to play bridge?" screamed Auntie
Tine in Auntie Rine's ear.

"Bridge?"

"Yes, if you want to play bridge? She _is_ so deaf, Herman!..."

"They won't remember me," said Constance, speaking of the old aunts.
"They must have forgotten me in these twenty years. How old they have
grown, Mamma!... How old we have all grown! Bertha is grey. I am going
grey myself. ... And all those little nieces, all those young nephews
whom I have never seen.... Do they always come, on Sundays?"

"Yes, child, every Sunday. There's a great kindness and affection among
them all. I always think that so delightful."

"We are a large family. I am glad to be here, but they are still like
strangers to me. How many of us are there here, Mamma?"

"Oh, quite thirty! Let me see...." Mamma van Lowe counted on her
fingers. "Uncle and Aunt Ruyvenaer, with Toetie and Dot and Poppie and
Piet and young Herman: that makes seven; then, Van Naghel and Bertha,
with the four girls and Karel: that's seven more; fourteen...."

Constance listened to her mother's addition, and smiled.... Twenty
years, twenty years ago! She felt as though she could have burst out
sobbing; but she controlled herself, smiled, stroked Mamma's hand:

"Mamma, dear Mamma.... I am so glad to be back among you all!"

"Dear child!"

"They have all received me so nicely. So simply."

"Why, of course, Connie. You're their sister."

Constance was silent.... Dorine, with two of the young nieces, poured
out the tea, brought it round:

"Have a cup, Constance? Milk? Sugar?"

How familiar and pleasant it sounded, just as though she were really one
of them, as though she always had been one of them: "Have a cup,
Constance?" ... As if it wasn't the first cup of tea she had had there
for years and years!... Dear Dorine! Constance remembered her as a girl
of seventeen, shy, not yet out, but even then caring, always caring, for
others. She was not pretty, she was even plain, ungraceful, clumsy,
badly-dressed....

"Yes, Dorine, I should like a cup.... Come here, Dorine. Sit down and
talk to me: the girls can see to the tea."

She drew Dorine to the sofa beside her and nestled between her mother
and her sister:

"Tell me, Dorine, do you still look after everybody so well? Do you
still pour the tea?"

Her voice had a broken sound, full of a melancholy that permeated her
simple, bantering words. Dorine made some vague reply.

"When I went away,