Page:Buddenbrooks vol 2 - Mann (IA buddenbrooks0002mann).pdf/327

RV 317 (BUDDENBROOKS) Perlemann drone on for the remainder of the period. Heinricy was almost sure to make trouble.

“I wasn’t here when we had this,” he said, none too respectfully.

Herr Ballerstedt puffed himself up, waved his fist, struggled to speak, and stared young Heinricy in the face with his eyebrows raised. His head shook with the effort he made; hut he finally managed to bring out a “Well!” and the spell was broken. He went on with perfect fluency. “There is never any work to be got out of you, and you always have an excuse ready, Heinricy. If you were ill the last time, you could have had help in that part; besides, if the first part dealt with the condition before the tribulation, and the second part with the tribulation itself, you could have told by counting on your fingers that the third part must deal with the condition after the tribulation! But you have no application or interest whatever; you are not only a poor creature, but you are always ready to excuse and defend your mistakes. But so long as this is the case, Heinricy, you cannot expect to make any improvement, and so I warn you. Sit down, Heinricy. Go on, Wasservogel.”

Heinricy, thick-skinned and defiant, sat down with much shuffling and scraping, whispered some sort of saucy comment in his neighbour’s ear, and took out his jack-knife again. Wasservogel stood up: a boy with inflamed eyes, a snub nose, prominent ears, and bitten finger-nails. He finished the summary in a rather whining voice, and began to relate the story of Job, the man from the land of Uz, and what happened to him. He had simply opened his Bible, behind the back of the pupil ahead of him; and he read from it with an air of utter innocence and concentration, staring then at a point on the wall and translated what he read, coughing the while, into awkward and hesitating modern German. There was something positively repulsive about Wasservogel; but Herr Ballerstedt gave him a large meed of praise. Wasservogel had the knack of making the masters like him; and they praised him

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