“Ef some men knowed themselves they’d be ashamed o’ the acquaintance,” opined Ezra. “An’ most women would. No, sir, I don’t take no stock in ’em. There ain’t nothin’ certain about love but the uncertainty. Women ain’t satisfied with the milk o’ human kindness. They want all the cream. What they expect is a sealskin livin’ on a mushrat salary. Love’s a kind of paralysis—kind of a stroke, like. Sometimes it’s only on one side an’ there’s hope. But ef it gits on both sides, it’s hopeless.”
“Love makes the world go ’round, Ezra!”
“Like Tophet! It only makes folks’ heads spin, an’ they think the world’s goin’ ’round, that’s all. Nobody knows the value of a gold-mine or a woman, but millions o’ men has went busted, tryin’ to find out! Not fer me, this here lovin’, sir,” Ezra continued with eloquence. “I never yet see a matrimonial match struck but what somebody got burned. Marriage is the end o’ trouble, as the feller says—but which end? I ask you!”
“You needn’t ask me, Ezra; I’m no authority on women. There’s a nice little proverb in this book, though, that you ought to know.”
“What’s that, Master Hal?”
“Here, I’ll find it for you.” Hal turned a few pages, paused, and read: “‘Bounga sedap dipakey, layou dibouang.’”
“Sufferin’ snails! What is that stuff, anyhow? Heathen Chinee?”
“That’s Malay, Ezra,” Hal condescended. The doctor, listening, felt a strange little shiver, as of some reminiscent fear from the vague long-ago. Those words, last heard at Batu Kawan, fifty years before, now of a sudden rose to him like specters of great evil. His attention strained itself as Hal went on:
“That’s a favorite Malay proverb, and it means: ‘While the flower is pleasing to man, he wears it. When it fades, he throws it away.’”
“Meanin’ a woman, o’ course? Uhuh! I see. Well, them heathens has it pretty doggone nigh correct, at that, ain’t they? So that there is Malay, is it? All them twisty-wisty whirligigs? An’ you can read it same as if it was a real language?”