"But that's an exception, isn't it?"
"Yes, of course, it's an exception. Don't be anxious about me, Sissy. I've a hide like a rhinoceros. I'm the pachyderm of the family. I haven't got your dainty little constitution. . . ."
"I am so glad when I come to you, Gerrit. I always brighten up in your house."
"You haven't been gloomy, surely?"
"That's just what I have been, quite lately."
"And why, Connie?"
"I don't know. Because of the weather . . ."
"Are you afraid of it? It's beginning to rain again."
"As long as it doesn't pour, we can go on walking. . . .
"It does me good, especially the wind blowing about one. Do you like wind?"
"Yes, I do . . . but . . ."
"But what?"
"Sometimes I hear too much in it."
"My little fanciful sister of old! What do you hear in it?"
"Gloomy things, melancholy things . . . but always very big things . . . whereas we ourselves are so small, so very small. . . ."
"People never change. . . . You're just the little sister that you used to be . . . in the river . . . with your fairy-tales . . ."
"But what I hear in the wind is not a fairy-tale."
