The old lady was sitting silently at the window--in the grey morning,
which seemed spent and weary with the wind out of doors--and her
thoughts were following a far course of their own in misty days of long
ago. Klaasje came up to her. The child had two heavy books under her
arm, bound volumes of _The Graphic_ and _L'Illustration_, and walked
bent under them; then she dropped them, clumsily.... Cross with the
weight of the books, she beat them angrily, but the hard boards hurt her
little hand; and so she decided to drag them to Granny, the naughty
books which refused to come: she dragged them by the open bindings which
had hurt her so; she tore them a bit, but that was their own fault,
because they wouldn't be carried.... Satisfied with her revenge in
tearing the books, she closed the bindings contentedly; the books lay at
Granny's feet, against her foot-warmer; and now Klaasje dragged up a
hassock too, pushed it against Granny's dress and, kneeling on the
hassock, asked Granny, in a motherly fashion:
"Granny!... Granny!... Granny like to look at pictures?"
The old woman, with a vague, misty glance, slowly turned her head
towards the child, whose fair hair fell loosely round the rather thin,
sharp little face, from which the over-bright eyes shone strangely, hard
and staring. The voice--"Granny look at pictures?"--rang strangely kind,
but too childish for a big girl of twelve, with a maturing figure. It
was too maternal towards the old woman:
"Granny!... Granny like to look at pictures?"
The old woman, vaguely, fancied herself at Buitenzorg, in a large white
palace among mountains, which stood out against a blue sky, and
coco-trees, which waved gently like ostrich-feathers; and she thought
that her little daughter Gertrude was kneeling by her and wanting to
look at the books with her. Her old mouth wore a little puckered smile;
and she put out her hands for the book, which Klaasje held up clumsily.
But the old woman was too weak to pull the heavy book on to her lap and
it slipped obstinately down her dress to the floor, against the
foot-warmer. Klaasje grew angry:
"Naughty books, naughty books!..."
She flew into a temper and struck the books again; but her little hand
was hurt and she suddenly began to cry.
"Ssh!... Ssh!..." said Granny, soothingly.
She bent painfully in her big chair and laboriously pulled up the heavy,
obstinate book; and Klaasje, with her eyes still wet, pushed up from
below, till at last it lay in Grandmamma's lap. Then Klaasje sighed,
after the final victory:
"Turn over," she said.
She turned over the heavy, clumsy binding and said:
"Klaasje will explain...."
But the black pictures, the dark portraits held no story for her; and,
pointing her finger at the picture or the portrait, she could not make
one up, could not find her tongue:
"Turn over, turn over," she repeated.
She was longing for colours, yellow, blue and red; but the pictures
contained black, all black stripes and black patches, and she thought
them ugly.
"Turn over, turn over, turn over," she kept repeating, excitedly
yearning for them to become yellow, blue and red.
The old woman, with her puckered smile, patiently turned over the
pictures. For her too they held no story, because they were black and
sombre; and she was already seeing colours for herself, the dead-white
and deep-blue, the bright, lacquered green of houses, sky and trees in
Java. Here, under the sombre oppression of the skies, here, in the
sombre pictures, the old woman and the child found nothing to charm
them.
Then Klaasje became very angry and dragged the heavy book from Granny's
lap and beat it, heedless of the pain, and scolded:
"Ugly books ... ugly, black books!"
"Ssh!... Ssh!" said the old woman soothingly, laying her veined hand on
the girl's fair head.
"Build a tower!" said Klaasje, with a gurgle of laughter suddenly
beholding a beautiful vision.
She sprang up quickly. On a table in a corner of the room she found a
box of dominoes. She brought the box, beaming with delight, but the
smooth lid slid out of the box and the dominoes rattled on the floor.
Klaasje stamped her foot, but the beautiful vision still shone before
her and hurriedly and passionately she scrabbled them into her little
pinafore. Then she brought them to Granny, like a harvest, like so much
booty, and rattled them down at her feet. With a great effort she again
pushed one of the heavy books on to Granny's lap; and the old woman
helped her, pulling while Klaasje pushed.
"Build tower!" cried the child.
Granny held the book, held it straight, while Klaasje placed two,
three, four pieces on their narrow edges. Upon these she went on
building the rickety black-and-white tower.
"A door and two windows," the child explained, lost in her game.
But the tower fell in with a crash.
"Granny mustn't move!" she whimpered.
Balancing the heavy book on Granny's knees, she went on building,
hurriedly, so as to get very high.
"Granny mustn't move again.... Tower ... with a wall round it.... Higher
... the tower ... one more stone on the wall ... one more stone on the
wall...."
But the wall and the tower came down with a crash.
"Naughty Granny!... Naughty Granny!"
"Ssh!" said the old woman, soothingly.
Addie had entered; and the child, dropping the book and the dominoes,
crowed with delight and ran up to him. She called him uncle, not
realizing that he was her cousin:
"Uncle Addie!" she cooed.
He opened his arms wide, lifted her a few inches from the floor:
"Look in Uncle Addie's pockets," he said.
"What have you got? What have you got?"
She fumbled in his pockets.
"No, that's Uncle's pocket-book.... No, that's his watch.... Here, look,
what's this?"
He now helped her find the little parcel. She tugged hurriedly at the
paper and string; and he opened the parcel for her. It was a little
kaleidoscope.
"Look through it...."
"Lovely!" said the child, gleefully. "Lovely ... blue, red, yellow!..."
"Now shake it...."
She shook the kaleidoscope: the colours, from a square, changed their
figure into a star.
"Green, blue, red!" the child cried.
"Now shake again...."
"Blue and yellow."
"There, what do you say to that?"
"Lovely!... Lovely!..."
She sat down on the floor, suddenly quiet and good, peered and shook the
little cylinder, peered and shook it again. In the gaudy star she
suddenly beheld a paradise:
"Green, yellow, blue."
Addie relieved Grandmamma of the book, put it down and began to arrange
the dominoes in the box.
"It's been blowing," said the old woman, pointing through the window.
"There are great branches lying in the garden."