“ ‘As you please, sir.’
“ ‘No, I ask you if you think such an excursion agreeable?”
“ ‘If my father does,’ she replied.—Was not this enough to anger me? Well, then, I did not get angry, the sun had set, and I felt myself good (gemüthlich) enough not to be disheartened by so much stupidity; or rather, I believe, I began to enjoy hearing my own voice—for few amongst us do not like to listen to their own voices,—and after my muteness during the whole day, I thought, now that I did speak, it merited something better than the silly replies of ‘Si Oepi Keteh.’
“I will tell her something, I thought, then I shall hear it too, without wanting any replies. Now you know that, as at the unloading of a ship, the ‘Kranjang’ (cask) of sugar last put on board is the first to be taken out, so we generally unload first that thought or tale that was acquired last. In the periodical paper, ‘Dutch India,’ I had read not long before a story by Jerome, ‘The Japanese Stone-Cutter.’. . . This Jerome has written many beautiful things. Did you read his ‘Auction in the House of the Dead’? And his ‘Tombs’? And, above all, the ‘Pedatti’? I will give you the last. I had just read ‘The Japanese Stone-Cutter.’. . . . Now I suddenly remember that my anger that day was connected with the perilousness of the Natal roads. . . . You know, Verbrugge, that no man-of-war can approach these roads,
