and no water. At that time
waterpipes had not been laid, and, if they had been, it's a question
if the water had ever got as far as Leentje.

So, everyone but Walter had a spite against Leentje. He liked her,
and was more intimate with her than with anyone else in the house,
perhaps because the others could not endure him, and there was nothing
left for him to do but to seek consolation from her. For every feeling
finds expression, and nothing is lost, either in the moral or in the
material world. I could say more about this, but I prefer to drop the
subject now, for the organ-grinder under my window is driving me crazy.

Walter's mother called him, "That boy." His brothers--there were
more beside Stoffel--affirmed that he was treacherous and morose,
because he spoke little and didn't care for "marbles." When he did say
anything, they attributed to him a relationship with King Solomon's
cat. His sisters declared he was a little devil. But Walter stood
well with Leentje. She consoled him, and considered it disgraceful
that the family didn't make more out of such a boy as Walter. She
had seen that he was not a child like ordinary children. And I should
scarcely take the trouble to write his story if he had been.

Up to a short time after his trip to Hartenstraat, Ash Gate and the
old bridge, Leentje was Walter's sole confidant. To her he read
the verses that slender Cecilia had disdained. To her he poured
out his grief over the injustice of his teacher Pennewip, who gave
him only "Fair," while to that red-headed Keesje he gave "Very good"
underscored--Keesje who couldn't work an example by himself and always
"stuck" in "Holland Counts."

"Poor boy," said Leentje, "you're right about it." They went over into
the Bavarian house. It's a disgrace! And to save a doit on the pound.

She claimed that Keesje's father, who was a butcher, let Pennewip
have meat at a reduced price, and that this was what was the matter
with all those Holland counts and their several houses.

Later Walter looked upon this as a "white lie," for Pennewip, when
examined closely, didn't look like a man who would carry on a crooked
business with beefsteak. But in those days he accepted gladly this
frivolous suspicion against the man's honor as a plaster for his own,
which had been hurt by the favoritism towards Keesje. Whenever our
honor is touched, or what we regard as our honor, then we think little
of the honor of others.

When his brothers je