Page:Buddenbrooks vol 1 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0001mann).pdf/133

RV 121 (BUDDENBROOKS) Papa well? And the honoured Frau Consul? Come in, come in! My wife has some sort of a bite ready, I suppose. Drive over to Peddersen’s Inn,” he said in his broadest dialect to the coachman, who was carrying in the trunk. “You’ll find they take good care of the horses there.” Then, turning to Thomas, “you’ll stop the night with us, Herr Buddenbrook? Oh, yes, you must. The horses want a bait and a rest, and you wouldn’t get home until after dark.”

“Upon my word, one lives at least as well here as at the Kurhouse,” Tony said a quarter of an hour later, as they sat around the coffee-table in the verandah. “What wonderful air! You can smell the sea-weed from here. How frightfully glad I am to be in Travemünde again!”

Between the vine-clad columns of the verandah one could look out on the broad river-mouths, glittering in the sun; there were the piers and the boats, and the ferry-house on the “Prival” opposite, the projecting peninsula of Mecklenburg.&mdash;The clumsy, blue-bordered cups on the table were almost like basins. How different from the delicate old porcelain at home! But there was a bunch of flowers at Tony’s place, the food looked inviting, and the drive had whetted her appetite.

“Yes, Mademoiselle will see, she will pick up here fast enough,” the housewife said. “She looks a little poorly, if I might say so. That is the town air, and the parties.”

Frau Schwarzkopf was the daughter of a Schlutup pastor. She was a head shorter than Tony, rather thin, and looked to be about fifty. Her hair was still black, and neatly dressed in a large-meshed net. She wore a dark brown dress with white crocheted collar and cuffs. She was spotless, gentle, and hospitable, urging upon her guests the currant bread that lay in a boat-shaped basket surrounded by cream, butter, sugar, and honeycomb. This basket had a border of bead-work embroidery, done by little Meta, the eight-year-old daughter, who now sat next her mother, dressed in a plaid frock, her flaxen hair in a thick pigtail. RV 121 (121)