Page:Max Havelaar; or, the Coffee Auctions of the Dutch Trading Company (IA dli.granth.77827).pdf/43

 Dear reader, you can understand how foolish I looked in being made all at once a broker in verses. I am quite sure that if Shawlman—so I will continue to call him—had seen me by daylight, he would not have dared to ask me such a favour; for respectability and dignity cannot be concealed; but it was evening, and therefore I don’t mind.

Of course, I would have nothing to do with this nonsense. I should have returned the parcel, but that I did not know where he lived, and I heard nothing of him. I thought that he was ill, or dead. Last week there was a party at the Rosemeyers, who are sugar-brokers. Fred went out for the first time with us; he is sixteen, and I think it right that a young man at that age should see something of the world; otherwise he will go to the Wester Market, or somewhere else. The girls had been playing on the piano and singing, and at dessert they teased each other about something that seemed to have happened in the front room while we played at whist in the back room—something in which Fred was con­cerned.

“Yes, yes, Louise,” said Betsy Rosemeyer; “you did cry. Papa, Fred made Louise cry.”

My wife said that Fred should not go out again if he was so naughty; she thought that he had pinched Louise, or something like that, which is not proper, and I, too, made preparations to say a few words about it,