Page:Buddenbrooks vol 2 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0002mann).pdf/104

RV 94 (BUDDENBROOKS) ful and beautiful gift. What do you think—where shall we put it? Shall we hang it in my private office?”

“Yes, Tom, over the desk in your office,” answered Frau Permaneder, and embraced her brother. Then she drew him into the bow-window and pointed.

Under a deep blue sky, the two-coloured flag floated above all the houses, right down Fishers’ Lane, from Broad Street to the wharf, where the “Wullenwewer” and the “Friederike Överdieck” lay under full flag, in their owner’s honour.

“The whole town is the same,” said Frau Permaneder, and her voice trembled. “I’ve been out and about already. Even the Hagenstroms have a flag. They couldn’t do otherwise.—I’d smash in their window!” He smiled, and they went back to the table together. “And here are the telegrams, Tom, the first ones to come—the personal ones, of course; the others have been sent to the office.” They opened a few of the dispatches: from the family in Hamburg, from the Frankfort Buddenbrooks, from Herr Arnoldsen in Amsterdam, from Jürgen Kröger in Wismar. Suddenly Frau Permaneder flushed deeply.

“He is a good man, in his way,” she said, and pushed across to her brother the telegram she had just opened: it was signed Permaneder.

“But time is passing,” said the Senator, and looked at his watch. “I’d like my tea. Will you come in with me? The house will be like a bee-hive after a while.”

His wife, who had given a sign to Ida Jungmann, held him back.

“Just a moment, Thomas. You know Hanno has to go to his lessons. He wants to say a poem to you first. Come here, Hanno. And now, just as if no one else were here—you remember? Don’t be excited.”

It was the summer holidays, of course, but little Hanno had private lessons in arithmetic, in order to keep up with his class. Somewhere out in the suburb of St. Gertrude, in a little ill-smelling room, a man in a red beard, with dirty

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