Page:Buddenbrooks vol 2 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0002mann).pdf/136

RV 126 (BUDDENBROOKS) Mill-wall, should take a walk with him to his father’s house to see the baby guinea-pigs. Fräulein Jungmann finally yielded to the teasing of the two children. They strolled out to the noble domain, viewed the dunghill, the vegetables, the fowls, dogs, and guinea-pigs, and even went into the house, where in a long low room on the ground floor. Count Eberhard sat in defiant isolation, reading at a clumsy table. He asked crossly what they wanted.

Ida Jungmann could not be brought to repeat the visit. She insisted that, if the two children wished to be together, Kai could visit Hanno instead. So for the first time, with honest admiration, but no trace of shyness, Kai entered Hanno’s beautiful home. After that he went often. Soon nothing but the deep winter snows prevented him from making the long way back again for the sake of a few hours with his friend.

They sat in the large play-room in the second storey and did their lessons together. There were long sums that covered both sides of the slate with additions, subtractions, multiplications, and divisions, and had to come out to zero in the end; otherwise there was a mistake, and they must hunt and hunt till they had found the little beast and exterminated him. Then they had to study grammar, and learn the rules of comparison, and write down very neat, tidy examples underneath. Thus: “Horn is transparent, glass is more transparent, light is most transparent.” They took their exercise-books and conned sentences like the following: “I received a letter, saying that he felt aggrieved because he believed that you had deceived him.” The fell intent of this sentence, so full of pitfalls, was that you should write ei where you ought to write ie, and contrariwise. They had, in fact, done that very thing, and now it must he corrected. But when all was finished they might put their books aside and sit on the window-ledge while Ida read to them.

The good soul read about Cinderella, about the prince who could not shiver and shake, about Rumpelstiltskin, about Rapunzel and the Frog Prince—in her deep, patient voice, her

RV 126 (126)