No amount of experience could teach him the
logic of our simplest ways. One evening he brought a tumbler of mixed
water and condensed milk. Harold Hill glanced into the receptacle.
"Stir it," he commanded briefly.
Herbert Spencer obeyed. We talked about something else. Some five or ten
minutes later one of us noticed that Herbert was still stirring, and
called attention to the fact. When the latter saw our eyes were on him
he speeded up until the spoon fairly rattled in the tumbler. Then, when
he thought our attention had relaxed again, he relaxed also his
efforts--the spoon travelled slower and slower in its dreamy circle. We
amused ourselves for some time thus. Then we became so weak from
laughter that we fell backward off our seats, and some one gasped a
command that Herbert cease.
I am afraid, after a little, that we rather enjoyed mildly tormenting
poor Herbert Spencer. He tried so hard, and looked so scared, and was so
unbelievably stupid! Almost always he had to pick his orders word by
word from a vast amount of high-flown, unnecessary English.
"O Herbert Spencer," the command would run, "if you would condescend to
bend your mighty intellect to the lowly subject of maji, and will snatch
time from your profound cerebrations to assure its being moto sans, I
would esteem it infinite condescension on your part to let pesi pesi."
And Herbert, listening to all this with a painful, strained intensity,
would catch the six-key words, and would falter forth a trembling "N'dio
bwana.
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