Page:German Classics of The 19h and 20th C. Vol.19.djvu/315

 VIII September was already at hand; there were no longer many guests in Aalsgaard. At the meals in the great timber-ceiled dining-hall on the ground floor, whose high windows opened out upon the sun-porch and the sea, the hostess always presided, an elderly spinster with white hair, colorless eyes, delicately pink cheeks, and a quavering, chirping voice, who always tried to group her red hands to advantage on the white table-cloth. A short-necked old gentleman with ice-gray sailor's beard and dark-blue face was there, a fish-dealer from the capital, who understood German. He seemed to be wholly stopped up as to nose, and inclined to apoplexy, for he drew short, jerky breaths and raised from time to time his beringed forefinger to one of his nostrils, in order to shut it and procure the other one a little air by means of vigorous snorting. None the less he paid constant court to the brandy bottle, which stood before him at breakfast as well as at the other meals. There was no one else except three tall American youths with their don or tutor, who silently adjusted his glasses and played football with them by day. They parted their reddish yellow hair in the middle and had long, impassive faces.

"Please, give me the wurst-things there," the one would say.

"That's not wurst, that's schinken," remarked another, and this was the only contribution which either they or the tutor made to the conversation; for otherwise they sat in silence and drank hot water.

Tonio Kröger would have desired no other sort of company at table. He enjoyed his peace, listened to the Danish gutturals and the bright and dark vowels, when the fish-dealer and the hostess occasionally conversed together, exchanged now and then with the former some simple remark about the barometer, and would then get up to pass