Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/211

 years old a manuscript, in which little or nothing has been effaced. They surprise the author en négligé, and that is often pretty.

“The child was stringing coral beads, and this seemed to absorb all her attention. Three red, one black three red, one black it was pretty!

“Her name was ‘Si Oepi Keteh.’ This means in Sumatra about the same as ‘little miss.’ Yes, Verbrugge, you know it, but Duclari has always served in Java. Her name was ‘Si Oepi Keteh,’ but in my thoughts I called her ‘poor creature,’ because I was exalted in my own ideas so very much above her.

“It was afternoon almost evening; the corals were laid aside. The land passed slowly by, and grew fainter and fainter behind us. To the left, far in the west, above the wide, wide ocean, which has no limit as far as Madagascar—the sun set over Africa, and his beams fell—more and more obliquely on the waves, and sought for coolness in the sea. What the dickens is it?”

“What? the sun?”

“No, no I used to make verses