with which for two years he had been so closely associated. And for a long time he could not eat, for his throat tightened when he tried to swallow.
One must remember that Saïdyah was a child.
The new buffalo got to know Saïdyah, and very soon won in the affection of the child the place of its predecessor . . . too soon, really. For, alas, the impressions of our heart, impressions as in wax, are so easily smoothed out, to make room for other writing! However, though the new buffalo was not so strong as the former one . . . though the old yoke was too wide for its shoulders . . . yet the poor animal was as docile as its predecessor which had been killed, and if Saïdyah could no longer boast of the strength of his buffalo when meeting Adinda’s little brothers on the boundary-line, he maintained that no other exceeded his in obedience; and if the furrow did not run as straight as before, or if lumps of earth were passed unbroken, he gladly remedied this deficiency with his spade as far as he could. Besides, no buffalo had a hairtwist like his. The priest himself had said that there was luck in the course of the hairy vertebræ at the back of the shoulders.
One day, in the field, Saïdyah called out in vain to his buffalo to speed up more. The animal stopped dead. Saïdyah, annoyed at an obstinacy so great and especially so unaccustomed, could not refrain from uttering an insult. He exclaimed a.s. Anyone that has been in Java will understand me, and those who do not understand can only gain by my sparing them the explanation of a coarse expression.
Saïdyah, however, meant nothing evil. He only said it because he had so often heard it from others when they were dissatisfied with their buffaloes. But he need not have said it, for it was of no avail; his buffalo took not another step forward. He shook his head as if to throw off the yoke . . . one saw the breath coming from his nostrils . . . he stood panting, he trembled, he quivered . . . there was fear in his blue eye, and his upper lip was drawn back until the gums lay bare. . . .
