“Well of course it did,” said O’Neill. “They always understood the words I used. It was the applications I made that hampered them.
“I had great trouble with a chatty old gentleman in the tram one morning going down to Scheveningen. It was just seven—I was hurrying to get an early dip, and he seemed bent on the same errand.
Attracted by my blazer and towel he opened conversation about sea-bathing, and then proceeded to discourse on the beauties of the landscape. He seemed chilled by the poverty of my adjectives, though I worked them vigorously.
A LOFTY CANOPY OF GREEN.
“Deze weg vin je zeker wel mooi?” he said at last, looking up at the arched green overhead. “Of houd U niet van de natuur?”
“Ja, zeker wel!” I hastened to assure him. “Ik houd er erg van—Het is prachtig! Net een tunnel van geboomte—van loofgroen.”
Then observing the pleasure my encomiums gave him, I ventured on something a little more lofty and poetic. My landlady had occasionally talked about a “canopy,” which, so far as I had understood her, I took to mean the vast cupola of hangings over the old-fashioned bed in my lodging. She used to say that the canopy was new and beautiful, and needed constant dusting.
I had always agreed to this, but never dreamt of hunting up a word that to all intents and purposes seemed the same as in English.
“Indrukwekkend schoon,” I added. “Wij zitten, als het ware, onder een canopey (that was my landlady’s pronunciation) van bladeren.”
“Een kanapé, mijnheer?”