oney must sweat or
steal. Well, if you robbed any poor soul of it, it was some woman, I'll
go bail; for a man would drive you with his naked hand. No matter, it is
good for one thing. It has shown me how you will guide our gear if ever
it comes to be yourn. I have watched you, my lads, this while. You have
spent a groat to-day between you. And I spend scarce a groat a week, and
keep you all, good and bad. No I give up waiting for the shoes that will
maybe walk behind your coffin; for this shop and this house shall never
be yourn. Gerard is our heir; poor Gerard, whom you have banished and
done your best to kill; after that never call me mother again! But you
have made him tenfold dearer to me. My poor lost boy! I shall soon see
him again shall hold him in my arms, and set him on my knees. Ay, you
may stare! You are too crafty, and yet not crafty enow. You cut the
stalk away; but you left the seed--the seed that shall outgrow you, and
outlive you. Margaret Brandt is quick, and it is Gerard's, and what is
Gerard's is mine; and I have prayed the saints it may be a boy; and it
will--it must. Kate, when I found it was so, my bowels yearned over her
child unborn as if it had been my own. He is our heir. He will outlive
us. You will not; for a bad heart in a carcass is like the worm in the
nut, soon brings the body to dust. So, Kate, take down Gerard's bib and
tucker that are in the drawer you wot of, and one of these days we will
carry them to Sevenbergen. We will borrow Peter Buyskens' cart, and
go comfort Gerard's wife under her burden. She is his wife. Who is
Ghysbrecht Van Swieten? Can he come between a couple and the altar, and
sunder those that God and the priest make one? She is my daughter, and
I am as proud of her as I am of you, Kate, almost; and as for you, keep
out of my way awhile, for you are like the black dog in my eyes."

Cornelis and Sybrandt took the hint and slunk out, aching with remorse,
and impenitence, and hate. They avoided her eye as much as ever
they could; and for many days she never spoke a word, good, bad, or
indifferent, to either of them. Liberaverat animum suum.

CHAPTER XLVI

Catherine was a good housewife who seldom left home for a day, and then
one thing or another always went amiss. She was keenly conscious of
this, and watching for a slack tide in things domestic, put off her
visit to Sevenbergen from day to day, and one afternoon that it really
could have been managed, Peter Buyske