Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/168

 “Now then, don’t tease! I only want to say that at night one feels more genial.

“Now when, as I said, the sun slowly vanished,” Havelaar went on, “I became a better human being. And it may be counted as the first sign of this improvement that I said to the little lady:

It will soon be a little cooler now.’

Yes, toowan!’ she replied.

“But I bowed my highness still lower to that ‘poor thing,’ and started a conversation with her. My merit was the greater as she answered very little. I was agreed with in all I said a thing which also grows tedious though one may be ever so conceited.

{{“‘Would you like to come again next time to Taloh Baleh?’ I asked.

As the toowan commander will decide.’

No, I ask {{em text|you}} whether {{em text|you}} think a trip like this pleasant.’

{{“‘}}If my father wishes it,” she answered. I ask you, gentlemen, was it not enough to drive one mad! Well, all the same, I did not go mad. The sun was down, and I felt genial enough not to be put off by so much stupidity. Or rather I believe I began to take a pleasure in hearing my voice—there are few among us who are not fond of listening to themselves—but after my taciturnity of the whole day it seemed to me that, having at last started speaking, I deserved something better than the two silly answers of Si Oopi Keteh.

“I’ll tell her a fairy tale, I thought, then I shall at the same time hear it myself, and there is no need for her to answer me. Now you know that, just as in unloading a ship the last Krandjang of sugar put in will be the first to come out again, so we also usually first unload the thought or story that was put into our mind last. In the ‘Magazine for Netherlands India’ I had shortly before read a story by ‘Jeronimus’: ‘The Japanese Stone-cutter’

“I may tell you that this ‘Jeronimus’ has written some charm- {{smallrefs}}