"Aunt, we're going to have a great tuck-in!"
"Allah,[1] that boy Herrit!" chortled Aunt Lot, looking terribly fat, with her vast, pendulous bosom, wearing no stays, indoors, but with brilliants the size of turnips in her ears. "Allah, that Herrit: he'd murder his own father for nassi!"
And Aunt went into ecstasies: Aunt, turned into a mobile Hindu idol, ran from kitchen to cellar and store-room; Toetie ran too; Alima ran too. The aromatic fragrance filled the whole house. There would be petis, black and scented and hot.
"Oh, for rice, with a dried fish, and petis!" Gerrit rhapsodized.
And Aunt laughed till the tears came, happy and glad because Gerrit was fond of nassi.
But there would also be kroepoek,[2] golden and crisp: the dried fish which, when heated, swelled up into brittle flakes, flakes that cracked in your fingers as you broke them and between your teeth as you crunched them; and then there would be lodeh,[3] with a creamy sauce full of floating vegetables and tjabé; and, to follow on the rice, Aunt had made djedjonkong, the Java sugar-cake, with the icing of white maizena[4] on the top; only Aunt was sorry that she could get no santen,[5] in "Gholland," and
