evening Jacobus made me stay to dinner; after, however, telling me
loyally that he didn't know whether he could do anything at all for
me. He had been thinking it over. It was too difficult, he
feared. . . . But he did not give it up in so many words.

We were only three at table; the girl by means of repeated "Won't!"
"Shan't!" and "Don't care!" having conveyed and affirmed her
intention not to come to the table, not to have any dinner, not to
move from the verandah. The old relative hopped about in her flat
slippers and piped indignantly, Jacobus towered over her and
murmured placidly in his throat; I joined jocularly from a
distance, throwing in a few words, for which under the cover of the
night I received secretly a most vicious poke in the ribs from the
old woman's elbow or perhaps her fist. I restrained a cry. And
all the time the girl didn't even condescend to raise her head to
look at any of us. All this may sound childish--and yet that
stony, petulant sullenness had an obscurely tragic flavour.

And so we sat down to the food around the light of a good many
candles while she remained crouching out there, staring in the dark
as if feeding her bad temper on the heavily scented air of the
admirable garden.

Before leaving I said to Jacobus that I would come next day to hear
if the bag affair had made any progress. He shook his head
slightly at that.

"I'll haunt your house daily till you pull it off. You'll be
always finding me here."