"But it must rhyme!"

Walter was thinking about reciting his robber song, but fortunately he reconsidered the matter. That would have been scandalous in the home of the Hallemans, who were so particularly respectable.

"No," cried another, who was again wiser than all the rest, "it needn't rhyme. The cow gives milk--Jack saw the plums hanging--Prince William the First was a great thinker. Don't you see, Walter, it's as easy as rolling off of a log. Go ahead and tell something, or else you won't get your p.a.w.n."

Walter began.

"A little boy died once who was not allowed to go to heaven----"

"Oho! That's the story of Peri. Tell something else."

"I was going to change it," said Walter, embarra.s.sed. "And so the little boy couldn't enter the heavenly gates, because he didn't know French, and because he had sometimes been bad, and because he hadn't learned his lessons, and also because he--because he"----I believe Walter had something on the end of his tongue about his mother's box of savings, but he swallowed it, that he might not offend the Hallemans by any allusion to the peppermint business--"because he once laughed during prayers. For it is certain, boys, that if you laugh during prayers you'll never get to heaven."

"So--o-oo?" asked several, conscious of their guilt.

"Yes, they can't go to heaven. Now the boy had had a sister, who died one year before him. He had loved her a lot, and when he died he began to hunt for his sister right away. 'Who is your sister?' he was asked."

"Who asked him that?"

"Be still! Don't interrupt him. Let Walter tell his story!"

"I don't know who asked that. The boy said that his little sister had on a blue dress and had dimples in her cheeks, and----"

"Just like Emma!"

"Yes, exactly like Emma. They told him that there was a little girl in heaven that looked just like that. She had come the year before, and had asked them to let her brother in, who would certainly inquire after her. But the boy could not go in. I have already said why."

"Had the little girl always learned her lessons?"

"Of course! Don't you see she had? Let Walter go on with his story!"

"It was sad that he could not get to see his sister any more. He felt that it hadn't really been worth the trouble to die. 'Oh, just let me in!' he begged the gentleman at the door----"

"At the gate!" corrected several simultaneously, who, though untouched by the sublimity of Walter's conception of death, were offended by the commonplaceness of the word door. But such things happen frequently.

"All right!" said Walter. He was ashamed that he had offended against propriety. "The gentleman at the gate said, 'No!' and then the poor boy returned to the earth."

"That won't do," cried the philosophical contingency, "whoever is dead remains dead."

"Don't interrupt him. Of course it's only a story!"

Walter continued: "He returned to the earth and learned French. Then he appeared at the gate again and said, 'Oui, Monsieur!' but it did no good; he was not admitted."

"I should think not; he ought to have said: 'j'aime, tu aimes.'"

"I don't know anything about that," Walter replied.

"Then he went to the earth again and learned his lessons till he could say them backwards. He did this for the keeper of the gate; but all this did no good; he was not allowed to go in."

"Of course not," cried one of the wise ones, "to get to heaven you must be confirmed. Had he been confirmed?"

"No. That's the reason it was so difficult. Then he tried something else. He said that he was engaged to his sister."

"Just like Betty," cried Emma.

"Yes, like Betty--and that he loved her and wanted to marry her. But it was all of no use; they wouldn't let him into heaven.

"Finally he didn't dare go to the gate any more, for fear the keeper would get angry at him."

"And then? What happened?"

"I don't know," Walter stuttered. "I don't know what he ought to do to get to heaven."

Walter knew the rest of the story very well, but he couldn't put it into words. This was shown in a peculiar manner an hour later.

On the way home the party was almost run over by a wagon just as they were crossing a bridge. In the commotion Emma slipped under the railing and fell into the stream. Somebody screamed, and Walter sprang after her.

If he had died at that moment the keeper of the gate would hardly have turned him away because he didn't know French and had not been confirmed.

When he was brought home, wet and dirty, Juffrouw Pieterse said that one ought not to tempt the Master, and that's what one did when one jumped into the water without being able to swim.

But I find that the man who can't swim is the very one to expect something of the Master; for the man who can swim has some prospect of helping himself.

And Juffrouw Pieterse complained that there was "always something the matter with that boy." There was something the matter with him.

CHAPTER XIV

Juffrouw Pieterse must have inherited something, for all at once the Pieterses moved to a more respectable neighborhood, and the daughters no longer knew any of the girls that they used to sew with. Such things do happen in cases of inheritance, when one moves to a more select quarter. Besides, there were other signs. They exerted themselves in trying to get Leentje to speak "better Dutch." Stoffel was zealous in teaching her, but Juffrouw Pieterse spoiled everything by her bad example.

Walter was now wearing a new jacket, with a small collar, such as cabmen wore later. For him a jacket to stuff in the trousers was a thing of the past. It "looked so babyish," the young ladies said, and was "out of the question now when the boy can write poetry."

That Walter could write poetry was boasted of to everybody that would listen. Under the circ.u.mstances they really had no right to reap any fame from Walter's robber song; but this only showed what an important role vanity plays in the world. Of course he himself never heard anything of this; it was mentioned only when he was not present.

The image of Cecilia had disappeared from Walter's heart; and little Emma was forgotten. Omicron must show her face in the stars from time to time to remind the child of his love. And even when he looked at the evening sky and his soul was stirred by an inexpressible longing after the good, it was not so much that he was thinking of Omicron as that he was moved by vague sweet memories. In the twelve years of his life there was a mythical prehistoric period which was difficult to separate from the historical period.

He didn't know that he could write verses. He accepted it as a matter of course that his robber song was very poor, and looked upon Klaasje van der Gracht with awe. It was from Juffrouw Laps he learned that he could write poetry; and it was an illumination for him.

Juffrouw Laps had an uncle whose birthday was coming the next week. She had paid the Pieterses a swell visit to ask if Walter wouldn't write her a poem for the occasion. She would see that he got some bonbons.

"But Juffrouw Pieterse, you must tell him that it must be religious and that my uncle is a widower. He must bring that in. I should like for it to be in the melody of the 103d psalm, for my uncle has that psalm in his lyre."

The reader will note that she did not mean the lyre of Apollo. What she spoke of was a thing that turned, and made a screechy noise.

Juffrouw Pieterse was going to speak with Walter about it when he came from school, but first she had to consider the matter with Stoffel, to decide whether it should be a request or a command, so that Walter would have no reason to be "stuck-up." For that she could not endure in a child.