She took the document in her hand and glanced at it; then suddenly sat down in my best arm-chair!
Now you must know that she is very respectful, always stands deferentially in my presence, and never dreams of taking liberties. Her conduct now was unaccountable. There she sat in the chair, rocking to and fro, her face hidden with both hands. Her agitation increased till finally she gave a kind of snort, for which she immediately apologised: “Neem me niet kwalijk, mijnheer! neem me niet kwalijk!”
Having regained a momentary composure, she dried her eyes with the corner of her apron and allowed her gaze to wander round the room. It fell upon my paper, and off she went again in a sort of suppressed shriek.
“O mijnheer! mijnheer!” she stammered convulsively. “Het is—voor—voor een hond!”
MOET MIJNHEER NAAR DE GEVANGENIS?
She ended with a hysterical sob as if she feared her emotions would choke her utterance.
All this naturally raised my suspicions as to the purity of my Dutch, though it seemed incredible that there could be much amiss with it. “Voor een hond” sounded like an expression of contempt, just as we dub ill-composed Latin, ‘Dog-Latin’, or pronounce poor food to be ‘not fit for a dog.’
She surely couldn’t imply that my Dutch would make a dog laugh?
It was clear now that she was highly amused at something I had written. At this I was just a little indignant, having spent all the morning hunting up equivalents in the dictionary and debating with myself about them.