Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/162

 no, that would still be matter!—a thought! But then all at once a brother or a father would be sitting by the side of those women, and  so help me God, I saw one who blew her nose!”

“Didn’t I know that you would again draw a black line across it!” said Tine, vexed.

“Is that fault? should have preferred to see her fall down dead! May such a woman desecrate herself?”

“But surely, Mr. Havelaar,” asked Verbrugge, “suppose she had a cold?”

“Well, she not have had a cold with such a nose!”

“Yes, but ”

Just then, as though Old Nick took a hand in the game, Tine suddenly felt that she must sneeze, and before she could stop herself she had blown her nose!

“Max, my dear boy, don’t be cross!” she begged with a half-restrained laugh.

He did not answer. And, however foolish it may seem or be yes, he  cross about it! And what will sound strange also, Tine was pleased that he was cross, and that therefore he demanded more from than from the Phocean women of Arles, even though it was not because she had cause to be proud of her nose.

If Duclari still thought that Havelaar was “mad,” one could not have blamed him for feeling confirmed in that opinion on noticing the momentary irritation which, after and on account of that nose-blowing, was to be read on Havelaar’s face. But the latter had come back from Carthage and now read—with the celerity with which he read when his mind was not too far away from home—on the faces of his guests that they were setting up the following two theses: