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fixed on my own line of thought until, at last, I must have become impossible to abide, for Mother scrubbed me with a brush and brought me to the domine for counsel. She did’n’t tell me why, but I was’n’t stupid: I could guess.
    When we arrived, the rectory stank of pickled herring. The domine,his chin hidden behind his tall collar, exhaled it on his breath. My mother described my melancholia with expressive gestures of the hands. I sat on my own fingers, lest they fly out to cover my nose. The domine worried his thatchy beard, & said,—Well,
mein Schmetterling
, leaning toward me. I sat tighter on my hands. It was his habit, when not muttering in Dutch, to pepper his conversation thus with German. In later years I unkindly thought he did this to show any who might be unsure on this point that he was university educated, but at the time, it was my simple misfortune to be either mystified or irked by his every turn of phrase. He was Brookland’s only minister, so even the child of atheists could not escape him, but I wished he could be less a fishy old dodderer and, if naught else, a stern avenger like my Pappy, the Reverend Mr. Elihu Juster Winship, whom I’d met the previous autumn.
    My father, set at long last on making amends with him, had taken me north to Massachusetts Colony, through fields and tracts of woodland that smelled sharply of fallen leaves. We’d passed what seemed hundreds of encampments of soldiers, ours and the Crown’s, along the way. Their tents would cluster in a field like a flock of geese come down for the night; and on two occasions Father had stopped to bestow casks of gin on ragged battalions of the Continental Army, who’d given such ululations of thanks I’d gripped tight to my father’s leg & steeled myself against being scalped. To Father’s surprise, I’d liked my grim old Pappy well enough, preaching and all. Your great-grandfather’s sermons were so stingy of human affection they’d shriveled his lips to a permanent pucker, as if he had an unripe persimmon forever upon his tongue; yet he had a great deal of rhetoric at his command. If his orations were full to overflowing with hellfire, at least they were’n’t dull as a snowstorm Sunday: They made a child stand up straight. I feared the perdition to which he claimed I & my dark humour were headed, but I almost liked the thrill of contemplating where my ultimate destination might be. Daddy, meanwhile, was full of tales about him,—how he’d raised his children with nary a toy but a worn-out boot, to which Father referred with alternating affection and disgust, calling it
Bootie
; the result of which, I deduced, was that he’d grown into a man who could not refuse a measure of port, and who, though engaged in a grubby business, was known for his attention to the cut of his clothes.
    But I should return to Domine Syrtis, who’d been speaking all thiswhile, and whose fat servant, Jannetje, had deposited a plate of warm aniseed
koekjes
in front of me, though she surely knew I had not been brought in for good behaviour.
    â€”Und so, mein Schmetterling
, Syrtis was saying. To mask the smell of his breath, I ate the
koekjes
quickly, barely swallowing one before inserting the next.—I do not blame your Mamma for fearing all that care upon your brow. But I daresay, Mrs. Winship, he tittered, if a child be born with morbid preoccupations, so much the less work for the Church, later on! He was still chirruping at his own fine sense of humour.
    My mother raised her thin eyebrows.—You think it well she should be so glum? You think it healthy? I choked on an oversized mouthful, and instead of patting my back, she slapped my wrist when I reached for another
koekje
.
    â€”Prudence is a good, God-fearing child, he said. He smiled, showing me his yellow teeth. I tried to smile back as I worked the dry meal in my mouth. Jannetje, more empathetick than my