"Het is een kleinigheid," I told her--"niets dan een kleinigheid. Maar ik zal het je betaald zetten."
That loosened her tongue. Her natural fluency asserted itself and appeared to fine advantage. But she was so needlessly excited that I knew there must be a misunderstanding somewhere. Accordingly to remove all haziness I just indicated that she had failed to grasp my meaning. The idiom for this I fortunately recollected. _You don't quite follow_ was one of those choice specimens of local colour that, by frequent repetition, I had thoroughly imprinted on my memory.
"Duizendmaal verschooning," I said heartily, "bent U soms niet goed snik?"
The effect of this well meant apology was electrical. The woman really became very rude. She got pale and grabbed at a chair. As we withdrew unostentatiously, we noticed her springing in our direction and talking. It was the most fluent talk I had yet heard in Dutch. She did not hesitate one instant for gender, number, or case. It rained, hailed and stormed terrible words--werkwoorden, voorzetsels, and especially tusschenwerpsels.
On reaching safety outside Terence asked me: "What was she angry about?"
"Oh," I answered, "as likely as not it's something out of the grammar. I believe I didn't use the right idiom. You have to be very particular about these things, you see.
I said vragen _voor_ een boterham, I think; and it should be vragen _om_. Still she made far too big a fuss over it: and I'd tell her so, if I could."
When we got outside of her garden plot and had latched the gate behind us, I turned to wave our grammarian a graceful adieu.
"Baker!" I said. "Banket baker! Wees niet zoo kleinzeerig. Niet zoo kwaalijknemend hoor! Wij zijn niet tegen je opgewassen. Maar",--and here I sank my voice to a confidential whisper, to make the irrelevancy sound as like wit as possible,--"maar, U weet nooit hoe een koe een haas vangt!"
I still flatter myself that the exit was worthy of the occasion.
AN ACCIDENT.--THE SUITOR'S MISTAKE.--NO DUTCH NEEDED.--JAN'S INCOHERENCES.--EEN STUK OF EEN.--KITTY GIVES KOPJES.--A QUIET SLEEP.
"Wel," continued Jack; "it was these experiences that made me begin to doubt the value of my Berlitz soliloquy-method. But Terence helped me to give the system a really good trial; and he worked as hard as I did.