Page:Buddenbrooks vol 2 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0002mann).pdf/219

RV 209 (BUDDENBROOKS) down a while in silence, with his hands in his trousers pockets.

“Yes, we have put it in the broker’s hands,” he said at length. “We must wait and see what comes of it. My opinion is that he will buy the whole property, live here in the front, and utilize the back part in some other way.”

She did not look at him, or change her position, or cease to knit. On the contrary, the needles flew back and forth faster than ever.

“Oh, certainly—of course he’ll buy it. He’ll buy the whole thing,” she said, and it was her throaty voice she used. “Why shouldn’t he buy it—you know? In fact, there would he no sense in that at all!”

She raised her eyebrows and looked severely through her pince-nez—which she now used for sewing, but never managed to put on straight—at her knitting-needles. They flew like lightning round and round each other, clacking all the while.

Christmas came: the first Christmas without the Frau Consul. They spent the evening of the twenty-fourth at the Senator’s house, without the old Krögers and without the Misses Buddenbrook; for the old children’s day had now ceased to exist, and Thomas Buddenbrook did not feel like making presents to everybody who used to attend the Frau Consul’s celebration. Only Frau Permaneder and Erica, with little Elisabeth, Christian, Clothilde, and Mademoiselle Weichbrodt, were invited. The latter insisted on holding the customary present-giving on the twenty-fifth, in her own stuffy little rooms, where it was attended with the usual mishap.

There was no troop of poor retainers to receive shoes and woollen underwear, and there were no choir-boys, when they assembled in Fishers’ Lane on the twenty-fourth. They joined quite simply together in “Holy Night,” and Therese Weichbrodt read the Christmas chapter instead of the Frau

RV 209 (209)