Before he had recovered from my unconscious wit, I perceived the error into which I had fallen. Simplex was merely a cycle-advertisement.
Then I laughed as heartily as he, saying “Gunst ja; overal”—which emboldened him to be still more familiar.
He fancied that I was a perfect master of Dutch, and could even joke in it. He talked most volubly; and,—my reputation as a linguist being now at stake,—whenever he made a slight pause I was obliged to say something to show I understood.
I didn’t understand. But I started him off always when he was inclined to stop, and I kept him going by a careful use of ‘ja’ and ‘neen’. If he appeared to expect agreement, I threw in a hearty ‘natuurlijk’, ‘ja zeker’, or ‘wel van mijn leven.’ At other points, and for variety’s sake, I interjected indignant negatives: ‘Wel nee!’ ‘schei er uit!’ ‘Hoe heb ik het met je?’—and now and then even ‘och kom!’ with the peculiar shake of the head that accompanies this phrase.
KOLOSSAAL MOOI.
The plan was brilliantly successful. True, he stopped sometimes and took a long queer look at me; but he was one of those garrulous people that require little encouragement, and the flood of his reminiscences always poured forth again as freely as ever.
We got along famously together—though I didn’t know one word he said—till we came opposite a tall church. Nodding patronisingly towards this building he said, “Pracht van een Kerk”, adding something about a ‘hooge toren’.
Here I felt on solid ground,—I understood him thoroughly. My natural wish to take an intelligent part in the conversation would be gratified if only I could say something about that edifice; and, one of the fresh idioms that I had recently acquired occurring to me, I promptly gave it to him by way of reply: “Ja, prachtig; het is kolossaal mooi.”
This choice idiom I had got just the day before from a policeman. We had been standing in front of a florist’s window—the policeman and I—admiring the tiny vases of lilies of the valley that were displayed there, when I heard him murmur half to himself and half to me “kolossaal mooi!” The combination so captivated my fancy that I added it without delay to my working stock.
THE LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR.