Page:Max Havelaar Or The Coffee Sales of the Netherlands Trading Company Siebenhaar.djvu/79

 “Yes, it is the west monsoon,” said the Regent.

This, of course, Verbrugge knew quite well: it was January. But what had said about the rain was equally well-known to the Regent. After this another brief silence. The Regent, with a scarce perceptible movement of his head, beckoned one of the servants who sat squatting at the entrance of the pendoppo. A little boy, charmingly attired in a blue velvet coatee, white pants, with a gilt belt which held his sarong round the loins, and on his head the attractive kain kapala, below which his black eyes peeped out mischievously, crept in a crouching position to the feet of the Regent, put down the golden box containing the tobacco, the lime, the seeree, the penang, and the gambeer, made the slamat, by raising both hands joined to his deeply bowed forehead, and then offered his master the precious box.

“The road must be difficult after so much rain,” said the Regent, as though to supply an explanation of the long wait. While speaking he spread some lime on a betel-leaf.

“In Pandeglang the road is not so bad,” answered Verbrugge, who, if it may be assumed that he had no intention of touching on any offensive subject, surely made this reply somewhat thoughtlessly. For he should have remembered that a Regent of Lebak cannot be pleased to hear the roads of Pandeglang praised, even though they should in reality be better than those in Lebak.

The Adhipatti did not make the mistake of answering too quickly. The little maas had already crept backward in a crouching position as far as the entrance of the pendoppo, where he took his place among his mates the Regent had already dyed his lips and few remaining teeth brown-red with the juice of his seeree, before he said: