This task Kathleen took on herself, after we discovered that Dr. MacNamara, though shaken, was not injured. Nothing would have pleased you better than to have seen her beaming face as she brought the trembling little kitty to Jan’s bedside. She didn’t know a word of Dutch; but managed to communicate quite easily, by signs, with Jan’s mother, whom she promised to come often and see.
We all assumed, at first, that the little fellow had escaped scot-free; but, in a day or two, he was in high fever, and unconscious. He had got a contusion, the doctor said, and would be confined to his cot for weeks.
It was marvellous to see how Kathleen comforted the poor mother, without either grammar, Polite Dialogue, or the use of Het.
JAN’S INCOHERENCES.
I grew quite jealous and envious. Here was I who had been slaving at syntax and accidence for weeks, and I couldn’t carry on an intelligent conversation for two minutes without deviating into metaphysics, or getting into a quarrel; while my cousin (who said she hated Dutch) could get through the niceties of sick-room nursing, and the subtleties of heartening up the poor hysterical mother, with the utmost ease and success.
And I knew for certain that she couldn’t go through the Present Optative of ‘ik graauw, ik kef en ik kweel’, or give one of the rules for gij (lieden)—no, not to save her life. But she was never at a loss, for all that. A more devoted nurse, indeed, I cannot imagine.
At the crisis, when the little sufferer was really in danger, she used to watch by him hours at a stretch, to relieve the helpless mother.
The serious turn came all at once; and no aid was at hand. Jan was in pain, and wandered in his talk, crying out that the motor-fiets was hunting him into the canal, for having rescued a vreemdeling; and pouring forth such a torrent of elementary English and Boyton-Dutch as surprised us all.
I fancy it was, in part, my early translations he had treasured up; for some of my mistakes about handcuffs and dogcollars figured amid the incoherences; and it was pitiable to hear him plead for a zie beneden to wrap round his injured arm—already bandaged as tightly as he could bear it.
EEN STUK OF EEN.