BUDDENBROOKS
her big white teeth, using the ivory-backed hand-mirror to see them better.
“I shall probably not marry at all,” she said, speaking with some difficulty on account of the tooth-powder. I don’t see why I should. I am not anxious. I’ll go back to Amsterdam and play duets with Daddy and afterwards live with my married sister.”
“What a pity,” Tony said briskly. “What a pity! You ought to marry here and stay here for always. Listen: you could marry one of my brothers—”
“The one with the big nose?” asked Gerda, and gave a dainty little yawn, holding the hand-mirror before her face.
“Or the other; it doesn’t matter. You could furnish beautifully. Jacobs could do it—the upholsterer in Fish Street. He has lovely taste. I’d come to see you every day—”
But then there came the voice of Mile. Popinet. It said: “Oh, mademoiselles! Please go to bed. It is too late to get married any more this evening!”
Sundays and holidays Tony spent in Meng Street or outside the town with her grandparents. How lovely, when it was fine on Easter Sunday, hunting for eggs and marzipan hares in the enormous Kröger garden! Then there were the summer holidays at the seashore; they lived in the Kurhouse, ate at the table-d’hôte, bathed, and went donkey-riding. Some seasons when the Consul had business, there were long journeys. But Christmases were best of all. There were three present-givings: at home, at the grandparents’, and at Sesemi’s, where bishop flowed in streams. The one at home was the grandest, for the Consul believed in keeping the holy feast with pomp and ceremony. They gathered in the landscape-room with due solemnity. The servants and the crowd of poor people thronged into the pillared hall, where the Consul went about shaking their purple hands. Then outside rose the voices of the choir-boys from St. Mary’s in a quartette, and one’s heart heat loudly with awe and expectation. The smell of the Christmas tree was already coming through the crack
