It could do no harm to give my mother tongue a trial:
“A glass of water.”
“Eh!”
I tried a mixture of the two languages:
“Ein glass of vater.”
This time she understood.
“Vater?” shrieked the lady, with such force that the rooster in the back yard leaped sidewise a distance of six feet. “Vater!”
“Ja, Vater, bitte.”
A deep silence followed—a silence so intense that one could have heard a fly pass by a hundred feet above. Slowly the lady placed a heavy hand on the gate between us. Perhaps she was wondering if it were strong enough to keep out the madman on the other side. Then, with a snort, she wheeled about and waddled toward the house. Close under the eaves of the cottage hung a tin basin. Snatching it down, she sailed for the canal behind the house, stooped, dipped up a basinful of that very same weed-clogged water that flowed by at my feet, and moved back across the yard to offer it to me with a patient sigh. After that, whenever I became thirsty, I got my drink from roadside canals after the manner of beasts of the field—and Hollanders.
Long before I reached Haarlem, I came upon the great flower farms. I saw more and more of these as I neared the town. I passed through the city of tulips and out onto the broad, straight highway that leads to Amsterdam. It ran as straight as a bee line to where it disappeared in a fog of rising heat-waves. Throughout its length it was crowded with vehicles, horseback riders, and, above all, with wheelmen who would not turn aside an inch for me, but drove me again and again into the wayside ditch.