"Oorip has suggested that the servants would like to have a sacrifice, because a new well has been built in the grounds...." "That well which is two months old?" "They don't make use of the water." "Why not?" "They are superstitious, you know; they refuse to use the water before the sacrifice has been offered." "Then it ought to have been done at once. Why didn't they tell Kario at once to ask me? I can't think of all that nonsense myself. But I would have given them the sacrifice then. Now it's like mustard after meat. The well is two months old." "It would be a good thing all the same, Papa," said Theo. "You know what the Javanese are like: they won't use the well as long as they've not had a sacrifice." "No," said Van Oudijck, unwillingly, shaking his head. "To give them a sacrifice now would have no sense in it. I would have done so gladly; but now, after two months, it would be absurd. They ought to have asked for it at once." "Do, Otto," Léonie entreated. "I should give them the sacrifice. You'll please me if you do." "Mamma half-promised Oorip," Theo insisted gently. They stood trembling before him, white in the face, like petitioners. But he, weary and thinking of his papers, was seized with a stubborn unwillingness, though he was seldom able to refuse his wife anything. "No, Léonie," he said, firmly. "And you must never promise things of which you're not certain." He turned away, went round the screen and sat down to his work. They looked at each other, the mother and the step-son. Slowly, aimlessly, they moved away, to the front-verandah, where a moist, dripping darkness drifted between the stately pillars. They saw a white form coming through the swamped garden. They started, for they were now afraid of everything, thinking at the sight of every figure of the chastisement that would overtake them like some strange thing, if they remained in the paternal house which they had covered with shame. But, when they looked more closely, they saw that it was Doddie. She had come home; she said, trembling, that she had been at Eva Eldersma's. Actually she had been walking with Addie de Luce; and they had sheltered from the rain in the compound. She was very pale, she was trembling; but Léonie and Theo did not notice it in the dark verandah, even as she herself did not see that her step-mother and Theo were pale. She was trembling like that because in the garden--Addie had brought her to the gate--stones had been thrown at her. It must have been some impudent Javanese, who hated her father and his house and his household; but, in the dark verandah, where she saw her step-mother and her brother sitting side by side in silence, as though in despair, she suddenly felt, she did not know why, that it was not an impudent Javanese....