“Geertje goes to school. Jozina goes to school. Roelf works by the farm.”
“How old is Roelf?”? She was being school teacherly again.
“Roelf is twelve.”
“Twelve! And no longer at school! But why not!”
“Roelf he works by the farm.”
“Doesn’t Roelf like school?”
“But sure.”
“Don’t you think he ought to go to school?”
“‘But sure.”
Having begun, she could not go back. ““Doesn’t your wife want Roelf to go to school any more?”
“Maartje? But sure.”
She gathered herself together; hurled herself behind the next question. “Then why doesn’t he go to school, for pity’s sake!”
Klaas Pool’s pale blue eyes were fixed on the spot between the horse’s ears. His face was serene, placid, patient.
“Roelf he works by the farm.”
Selina subsided, beaten.
She wondered about Roelf. Would he be a furtive, slinking boy, like Smike? Geertje and Jozina. Geertje—Gertrude, of course. Jozina? Josephine. Maartje?—m-m-m-m—Martha, probably. At any rate, it was going to be interesting. It was going to be wonderful! Suppose she had gone to Vermont and become a dried apple!
