Page:Buddenbrooks vol 2 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0002mann).pdf/32

RV 22 (BUDDENBROOKS) sitting, but that each of the three chambers has turned in a different name: namely Hagenström, Kistenmaker, and Buddenbrook. A secret ballot must now be taken, with ballot-papers—it is to be hoped that it will show a clear plurality! For people without overshoes are suffering, and stamping their feet to warm them.

The waiting crowd is made up of all sorts and conditions. There are sea-faring characters, with bare tattoed necks and their hands in the pockets of their sailor trousers; grain porters with their incomparably respectable countenances, and their blouses and knee-breeches of black glazed calico; drivers who have clambered down from their wagons of piled-up sacks, and stand whip in hand to wait for the decision; servant-maids in neckerchiefs, aprons and thick striped petticoats with little white caps perched on the backs of their heads and market-baskets hanging on their bare arms; fish and vegetable women with their flat straw baskets—even a couple of pretty farm girls with Dutch caps, short skirts, and long flowing sleeves coming out from their gaily-embroidered stay-bodies. Mingled among these, burghers, shop-keepers who have come out hatless from neighbouring shops to exchange their views, sprucely-dressed young men who are apprentices in the business of their fathers or their fathers’ friends—and schoolboys with satchels and bundles of books.

Two labourers with bristling sailor beards, stand chewing their tobacco; behind them is an excited lady, craning her neck this way and that to get a glimpse of the Town Hall between their powerful shoulders. She wears a long evening cloak trimmed with brown fur, which she holds together from the inside with both hands. Her face is well covered with a thick brown veil. She shifts her feet about in the melting snow.

“Gawd! Kurz bain’t gettin’ it this time, nuther, be he?” says the one labourer to the other.

“Naw, ye mutton-head, ’tis certain he bain’t. There’s no

RV 22 (22)