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Updated: June 8, 2025
Poentje splashed with his naked little feet in the puddles and asked for mother. "We're almost home, child," said Trientje, to soothe him. They went through the wet grass and fragrant cornfields along the slippery footpaths to a big road. Look, there, behind the turning, came mother: she had a sack-cloth over her head and two umbrellas under her arm; she looked angry and ugly.
When Trientje saw her sister coming home in the distance, she put out her little arms and then would not let her go. For mother, Horieneke had to wash the dishes, darn the stockings and, when the baby cried, sit for hours rocking it in the cradle or dandling it on her lap, like a little young mother.
Indoors everything was anyhow: Fonske was going about in his shirt, Bertje had one leg in his breeches and Dolfke sat on the floor, playing with Trientje. Father had made coffee and stood with the bottles and glasses ready, looking dumbfounded at his child, now that he saw her for the first time in her white clothes.
Holding Trientje by the hand and carrying the other on her arm, she would walk along the paths of the garden and then put them both down on the bench in the box arbour, while she tended the plants and shrubs that were beginning to shoot. In the evening, when the bell rang for benediction, she called all her little brothers and they went off to church together.
Trientje stood in the doorway, in her little shirt, with her stomach sticking out, watching her brothers as they disappeared; and, when she saw them no longer, she thrust her fists into her sockets, opened her mouth wide and started a-crying, until mother's hands lifted her up by the arms and mother's thick lips gave her a hearty kiss.
And she lifted Horieneke from among the flowers, right up to her beaded breast, and pressed her thick lips to the child's forehead with a resounding smack. "Godmother, godmother," whimpered Trientje. "Yes, you too, my duck!" And the child forthwith received two fat kisses on its little cheeks. The dogs were now unharnessed and father and Petrus had gone for a stroll in the orchard.
When every one was served and Trientje had stammered out her Our Father aloud, father once more stood up, as the master of the house, and said: "You are all of you welcome and I wish you a good appetite."
Trientje opened her basket and they ate up all their bread-and-butter. Near them, in the grass, ants crept in and out of a little hole. Lowietje poked with a stick and the whole nest came crawling out. The children sat looking to see all those beasties swarm about and run away with their eggs.
Trientje steadily picked her whole basket full and Poentje sat playing on the way-side grass with a bunch of cornflowers. In the wood, everything was still: the trees stood firmly in the blaze of the sun and the young leaves hung gleaming, without stirring. A bird sat very deep down whistling and its song rang out as in a great church. Turtle-doves cooed far away.
Mother tucked in her breast, buttoned her jacket and laid the child carefully in the cradle, near Trientje, who sat sleeping in her little baby-chair. They left everything as it was: table and plates and pots and glasses. Father and uncle filled their pipes and went outside under the elder-tree, in the shade. The wives tucked their clothes between their legs and lay down in the grass.
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