le of mouth signifying graciousness and good breeding.

"You must eat more, or I shall think you don't like it." She had
baked it herself.

"Then I cannot refuse, Juffrouw Pieterse. Oblige and many thanks."

"And you, Juffrouw Laps, what can I pass you?" Juffrouw Laps selected
ginger cake.

"Fill the cups, Trudie! Yes, Mrs. Stotter, when you are here you must
drink with us. You are welcome to anything we've got. Pietje, wipe off
a table--such a girl! And now go and look after the baby, and tell
her that I don't want to hear any more noise. Ah, Juffrouw Mabbel,
children are a great deal of trouble. And your little Sientje--how
is her cough now?"

"We've got a magnetisier, but that isn't enough. We must have the
clairvoyange of the sonnebule."

"You don't say so! One can hardly believe it. And when is he coming,
the cler--cleek--clar----"

"It's in the nerves, Juffrouw Zipperman. But he has the little nightcap
and nightgown, in which she has sweated, you know; and he says that
it will come all right now."

"Who would have thought it! What will you do now?"

"That's just it; the sonnebule must tell us what to do."

Juffrouw Laps could not agree to this.

"I wouldn't do it--I wouldn't do it--not for anything in the world! I
tell you, what God does is all right. Just mark my words!"

"Yes, Juffrouw Laps; but the Juffrouw at the provision store did it,
and her child is lots better."

"That's what you say, Juffrouw Mabbel, but I tell you there is
something in her eye that I don't like."

"What then, Juffrouw Laps?"

"She has a look, a look--and it's sin--I tell you it is. It's wrong,
it won't do. What God does is all right."

"Come, Stoffel, talk some. You sit there like a stone. Recite a poem,
or tell us something about your school. Would you believe it, Juffrouw
Mabbel, he knows a whole poem by heart. And he has memorized all the
verbs of the feminine gender."

"Mother, what are you talking about?" said Stoffel, displeased. "Don't
you see I'm smoking?"

"Yes, dear, I meant when you were through smoking. Then you can repeat
the words. You will be surprised, Juffrouw Zipperman, and wonder where
he learned it all. How does it go? 'I would have been drunk, he would
have been drunk'--of course, you know, he was not drunk, it belongs
with the verbs. You will kill yourself laughing when he begins. Fill
the cups, Trudie, and blow in the spout; there's a leaf over it."

The reader will not take it amiss, I tr