Chapter 5 Summary

His father's slight still fresh in his mind, Pieter leaves the store in a sullen mood. The narrator, Pieter's Tante ("Aunt") Sophie, recalls that Pieter was fourteen when his father took Pieter's stamps away and forbade him from collecting any more, reasoning that it was interfering with his schoolwork. At the age of seventeen, having matriculated from high school first in his class, his father allowed the stamps to be returned.

Upon receiving the wrapped package however, the boy shows no emotion, and simply thanks his father. His mother takes him by the hand to his room and tells him to open it. Inside the parcel are his own books of stamps, along with packets his mother and aunt had purchased for him in the intervening years. Sitting with his mother, he weeps but never brings them out again, keeping the stamps only...