BUDDENBROOKS
desert. After sunset a sultry breath, like a hot blast from an oven, streamed out of the small houses and up from the pavement of the narrow streets. To-day the wind had gone round to the west, and at the same time the barometer had fallen sharply. A large part of the sky was still blue, but it was slowly being overcast by heavy grey-blue clouds that looked like feather pillows.
Tom added: “It would be a good thing if it did rain, I think. We should collapse if we had to walk in this atmosphere. It is an unnatural heat. Hotter than it ever was in Pau.”
Ida Jungmann, with little Erica’s hand in hers, came into the room. The child looked a droll little figure in her stiffly starched cotton frock; she smelled of starch and soap. She had Herr Grünlich’s eyes and his rosy skin, but the upper lip was Tony’s.
The good Ida was already quite grey, almost white, although not out of the forties. It was a trait of her family: the uncle that died had had white hair at thirty. But her little brown eyes looked as shrewd and faithful as ever. She had been now for twenty years with the Buddenbrooks, and she realized with pride that she was indispensable. She oversaw kitchen, larders, linen and china cupboards, she made the most important purchases, she read to little Erica, made clothes for her dolls, and fetched her from school, with a slice of French bread, to take her walking on the Mill-wall. Every lady said to Frau Consul or her daughter: “What a treasure your Mamsell is, my dear! Goodness, she is worth her weight in gold! Twenty years—and she will be useful at sixty and more; these wiry people are. What faithful eyes she has! I envy you, my love.” But Ida Jungmann was very reserved. She knew her own position, and when some ordinary nurse-girl came and sat down with her charge on the same bench and tried to enter into conversation, Ida Jungmann would say: “There is a draught here, Erica,” and get up and go.
