Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/37

Rh ing to do with this nonsense. I should have got Frits to take the parcel back, but I did not know his address, and I heard nothing from him. I thought he might be dead, or ill, or something of the kind.

Last week it was the Rosemeyers’ turn for the party which we give alternately. They are sugar people. Frits went for the first time. He is sixteen years old, and it seems to me a good thing for a young man to go out into the world. Otherwise he may only go to the Westermarket, or some such thing. The girls, before dinner, had been playing the piano and singing, and during dessert they were teasing each other about something that appeared to have taken place in the drawing-room, while we were having a game of whist, something that seemed to concern Frits. “Oh, yes, Louise,” exclaimed Betsy Rosemeyer, “you cry! Papa, Frits has made Louise cry!”

My wife at once said that in that case Frits should not again come to any party. She thought he had pinched Louise, or something else unseemly, and I also was just about to add a word to the point, when Louise exclaimed:

“No, no! Frits has been very nice! I wish he would do it again!”

What could it be? He had not pinched her, he had given a recitation, that was it!

Of course the lady of the house always likes to see her guests amused during dessert. It fills a void. Mrs. Rosemeyer—the Rosemeyers want to be called “Mrs.,” as they are sugar people and own a share in a ship—Mrs. Rosemeyer guessed that what had made Louise cry would also entertain us, and asked Frits for an encore; he had turned as red as a turkey. I could not think for the world what he had given them, for I knew his repertoire to a t. It was: “The Wedding of the Gods,” “The Books of the old Testament in Rhyme,” and a passage from “The Wedding of Kama-