Tea had been eaten and cleared away before the children arrived back. They came rushing in, all talking at once and in Dutch, making a beeline for their uncle, who sat back in his chair, apparently unworried by their delighted onslaught upon his vast person. It was only after they had talked themselves to a standstill that he said in English: ‘I told you that while your mama was in hospital I would find someone to look after you all. This is Miss Elizabeth Partridge, who will do just that. Say how do you do and shake hands with her, if you please.’
He had told Beth that they were as disobedient as most children, but not at that particular moment they weren’t. They came forward in turn to do as their uncle had bidden them, saying, ‘How do you do?’ and giving their names with almost old-fashioned good manners.
‘How nice to meet you all,’ declared Beth, beaming down at them all, ‘and do you suppose that you might call me Beth? I should much prefer it.’
The professor had got to his feet; now he had done his duty in introducing the children to her, it seemed that he now felt free to go. ‘Why not?’ he agreed placidly. ‘Do whatever Miss Partridge asks of you, my dears. Now I have an evening engagement and will bid you all good night, for you will be asleep by the time I get home. I shall see you tomorrow, no doubt.’
Left alone with the children, Beth sat down again and invited them to tell her about themselves, something they were ready enough to do and which gave her the opportunity to observe them rather more closely. Dirk, the obvious leader of the quartet, was tall for his age, fair-haired and blue-eyed and thin as only boys of ten can be. Marineka, who came next, was blue-eyed and fair-haired too and almost as tall as Dirk, although a good deal plumper, and Hubert was nicely chubby too, with the same ash-blond hair. It was the littlest one, Alberdina, who wasn’t like any of them; she was short and decidedly plump, with large dark eyes and long brown hair. She could be only just five, Beth decided, for she still had a babyish way of sidling close and holding any hand which happened to present itself.
She was holding Beth’s hand now, smiling up at her and saying something in Dutch.
‘You have to speak English, Alberdina,’ Dirk told her, and then explained: ‘We all know how, because we had a nanny, but she’s married now, and Alberdina hasn’t had as much time to learn it as we have.’
‘You all speak English beautifully,’ Beth hastened to assure him. ‘I only wish I could speak Dutch. And now will you tell me what you do now? Have you had your tea? And what do you do before bedtime?’
They all told her, so that it took her a little while to discover that they had their supper at six o’clock and then, starting with Alberdina, they went to bed—Dirk last of all at eight o’clock. ‘Although sometimes I go to bed earlier than that,’ he took pains to tell her, ‘so that I can read, and of course on Saturdays, while we are here with Uncle Alexander, we stay up later.’
‘What fun—why?’
‘We go out with him in the afternoon, to the Zoo or for a ride in his car, and then we have tea somewhere special, and when we come home we play cards. We’re good at cards. You play also?’
‘Well, yes, though I’m not very good, I’m afraid, but I don’t expect…that is, I daresay your uncle would like to have you to himself.’
They all nodded agreement so cheerfully that she felt quite disappointed.
It was evident that they were on their best behaviour; they took Beth over the house, much larger than it looked from the outside, showing her everything, even the cupboards and attics. They would have shown her their mother’s room as well as their uncle’s if she had given them the smallest encouragement. She declined a conducted tour of the kitchen too, merely asking where it was, just in case she should need to go there, though that seemed unlikely because Mrs Silver, stopping for a chat when she came to call the children to their supper, informed her in a kindly way that she was expected to do nothing at all save be with the children. ‘And a great relief that will be to us all, miss, if I might say so—dear little things though they are and quite unnaturally quiet this evening, but that’s because you’re here. It will be nice to be able to get on with our work knowing they’re in good hands.’ With which heartening words, she nodded and smiled and went off to the kitchen.
Supper was in a small room at the back of the house, given up to the children’s use while they were staying there. It was a pleasant place, furnished comfortably and obviously well lived in. Beth, presiding over the supper table, pouring hot chocolate and cutting up Alberdina’s scrambled egg on toast into small pieces, found herself enjoying the children’s company; it was a nice change to talk about fast cars, the dressing of dolls and the star footballers instead of the everlasting shop which was talked at the hospital, and even when she was home, William liked to tell her about his cases; many a meal she had eaten to the accompaniment of a blow-by-blow account of the appendix which had ruptured, the ulcer which had perforated on the way to theatre, the stitching he had been allowed to do…it was pleasant to forget all that and listen to the children’s chatter. To sit at such a table with children such as these, but her own, watching them gobble with healthy appetites, hearing their high, clear voices, would be wonderful, she thought wistfully. She was deep in a daydream when she was roused by Hubert’s asking why her eyes were a different colour from everyone else’s.
‘I don’t really know,’ she told him. ‘It’s just that they’re mauve—everyone has different coloured eyes…’
‘We all have blue eyes,’ said Dirk, ‘not Alberdina, of course, hers are brown, but Mama and Papa have blue eyes too and so has Uncle Alexander.’
‘My doll, Jane, has brown eyes,’ Marineka tossed her fair hair over her shoulder. ‘It is to do with genes,’ she announced importantly.
Beth looked at the little girl with something like awe. She hadn’t known anything about genes until she was in the sixth form of the rather old-fashioned school her father had sent her to, but then of course she hadn’t a doctor for an uncle and her father, moreover, hadn’t held with girls knowing too much. She said hastily, before she became involved in a conversation concerning genetics in which she felt reasonably sure she would make but a poor show: ‘Have you any pets at home?’
It was a successful red herring; there were several cats, all with outlandish Dutch names, and a dog called Rufus, as well as a tame rabbit or so, goldfish in a pond in the garden and a canary, although the latter belonged to someone called Mies whose function in their home was not explained to her. It was an easy step from that for Dirk to describe his uncle’s two dogs, Gem and Mini, black labradors, and when Beth commented on their names, he gave her a sharp look. ‘They’re twins,’ he told her, and waited.
‘Oh, I see—Gemini, the heavenly twins! Very clever of someone to have thought of that.’
Her worth had obviously increased in his eyes. ‘Not many people think of that. Uncle Alexander has a cat too, called Mops and two horses as well as a donkey, and there’s a pond with ducks. We feed them when we go to stay with him.’
It would have been nice to have heard more, but what would be the good? It would only stir up a vague feeling which she supposed was envy. She suggested mildly that it was about time Alberdina went to her bed, and offered to help her take a bath, a suggestion which was received with such a lack of surprise that she concluded that the children were quite in the habit of having someone to look after them; no wonder the professor had been so anxious to find a substitute for their mother.
By half past eight they were tucked up, the two boys sharing a large room next to her own, the little girls across the landing. Beth, a little untidy after her exertions, retired to her room to change her sweater for a blouse and do her hair and face before going downstairs. Mrs Silver had said dinner at half past eight, and she was