To discourage her levity I answered quite coldly: “Wat is voor een hond? ik zie geen hond. Waar is hij?”
“O mijnheer”, was the spasmotic reply, delivered in jerks, “halsband,—hals—band—is altijd voor—voor een hond! Ik lach me dood!”
I could not argue the point with her or convince her by reasoning that my choice must be correct.
So I just said “Hé!” and waited for her to recover. Presently she dried her eyes again, rose from the arm-chair, and tried to get away; but once more her eye fell on the fatal manuscript—this time on Handboeien—and again she dropped back with a smothered yell.
QUEEN ELIZABETH IS UNKNOWN.
Then she apologized, then cried, then laughed, then finally gathered breath to say, “Voor een gevangene! Moet mijnheer naar de gevangenis?”
“Ik weet het niet,” I protested in perplexity; “ik weet er niets van. Wat is gevangenis?”
She rose, and silently picking up my little dictionary, with an unsteady hand turned over to ‘gevangenis.’ She pointed to the English and I read ‘prison’. Thus the ‘handboeien’ were ‘handcuffs’!
I couldn’t say she was mistaken. So I merely drew my pen through this item and said “Hè!” letting the matter rest.
Now she laughed at everything, at nachtgewaden, at voorwerpen, at my message to the washerwoman, even at sokken, though since I have never been able to discover why, except that it was the only proper word on the list.