treet. That time, he had not imagined that
it was he whom the boy meant.

Try as he would to keep calm, he was too much excited to go straight
home and perhaps meet Papa and Mamma. He therefore rode to the
Bezuidenhout, hoping to find Frans van Naghel in: Henri was not at the
Hague, was working hard at Leiden.

He found Frans at home, in the two elder boys' sitting-room, smoking
with a couple of friends.

"Well, old man, what is it?"

And he took Addie outside.

"I've been fighting with that cad of a Jaap. He called me an Italian,
Frans. What did he mean?"

Frans started; and Addie noticed it, became suspicious.

"Oh, nothing, old man: it's just that he's an ass!"

"No, Frans, there must be some reason why he called me that; and I mean
to know the reason."

"Don't worry about it, old chap."

"And the other fellows licked Jaap because he said it. And then Jaap
also said ..."

"Well, what else did Jaap say, old man?"

"That I ... that I was not the son of my father."

Suddenly, while he was unbosoming himself in the warmth of Frans'
sympathy, a light flashed across him. He remembered the mysterious fits
of sadness of Mamma's, scenes with Papa, during those early days at the
Hague, when he had vaguely noticed in his mother something as though she
were asking for forgiveness, humbling herself before Grandmamma, before
the uncles and aunts. And all this, taken in connection with Papa and
Mamma's former residence in Italy, in Rome, caused to flicker before him
as it were a reflection of cruel truths. As he looked at Frans, these
cruel truths flickered up before him again. He had read much for his
years; his school, his school-friends had soon revealed some of the
mysteries of life to him, though he was still a boy, though he was still
a child, with a child's innocence in his soul and his eyes, with the
soft bloom of that innocence on his child's skin and his child's mind,
even though there was something of a little man about him. And,
suddenly, he saw everything: the rage of the boys because Jaap had given
himself away, their confusion and now Frans' confusion....

"Not the son of your father?" repeated Frans. "They're asses, those
three louts.... Come, Addie, don't have anything more to do with those
clod-hoppers. When they're coarse, they're very coarse and they don't
know what they're saying."

"Yes," said Addie, with sudden reserve, "that's what it must be, that's
what it is."

"Come, Addie, come for