Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/55

 terials of selecting and arranging the necessary, there continually occurred in the manuscripts words and expressions that he did not understand, and that to me also were strange. It was most often Javanese or Malay. Also there were here and there abbreviations which were difficult to interpret. I realized that we could not do without Shawlman, and as I don’t think it a good thing for a young man to form undesirable connections, I did not wish to send either Stern or Frits to him. I took with me sugar-plums that were left from the latest party—for I always think of everything—and I looked him up. His abode was not exactly sumptuous, but equality for all men, which would of course include their dwellings, is surely a chimera. He had said so himself in his essay on the claims to happiness. Moreover I don’t like people who are always discontented.

It was in the Long-Leyden-Side-Street, in a back room. The lower storey was occupied by a second-hand dealer who sold a variety of things, such as cups, dishes, furniture, old books, glassware, portraits of Van Speyk and other articles. I was in dread of breaking anything, for in such a case people always demand more money for things than they are worth. A little girl was sitting on the stoop, dressing her doll. I asked whether Mr. Shawlman lived there. She ran away, and the mother came.

“Yes, he lives here, Sir. Just step inside up the stairs to the second passage, and then another stair and then you’ve got it, you can’t miss it. Minnie, just go and tell ’em there’s a gentleman. Who shall she say it is, Sir?”

I said I was Mr. Drystubble, coffee-broker, from the Laurier Canal, but that I would announce myself. I climbed as high as she had said, and in the third passage heard a child’s voice singing, “Presently father comes, dearest papa.” I knocked, and the door was opened by a woman or lady—I really didn’t exactly know what to make of her. She was very pale. Her features bore marks of fatigue, and reminded me of my wife when she has just finished