BUDDENBROOKS
more!’ Even to-night, when his Mama kissed him good night before she went to the concert, he asked her to ‘pray for the little man.’ ”
“And did he pray too?”
“Not aloud, but probably to himself.—He hasn’t said much about the other poem—it is called ‘The Nursery Clock’—he has only wept. He weeps so easy, poor little lad, and it is so hard for him to stop.”
“But what is there so sad about it?”
“How do I know? He has never been able to say any more than the beginning of it, the part that makes him cry in his sleep. And that about the waggoner, who gets up at three from his bed of straw—that always made him weep too.”
Frau Permaneder laughed emotionally, and then looked serious.
“I’ll tell you, Ida, it’s no good. It isn’t good for him to feel everything so much. ‘The waggoner gets up at three from his bed of straw’—why, of course he does! That’s why he is a waggoner. I can see already that the child takes everything too much to heart—it consumes him, I feel sure. We must speak seriously with Grabow. But there, that is just what it is,” she went on, folding her arms, putting her head on one side, and tapping the floor nervously with her foot. “Grabow is getting old; and aside from that, good as he is—and he really is a very good man, a perfect angel—so far as his skill is concerned, I have no such great opinion of it, Ida, and may God forgive me if I am wrong. Take this nervousness of Hanno’s, his starting up at night and having such frights in his sleep. Grabow knows what it is, and all he does is to tell us the Latin name of it—pavor nocturnus. Dear knows, that is very enlightening, of course! No, he is a dear good man, and a great friend of the family and all that—but he is no great light. An important man looks different—he shows when he is young that there is something in him. Grabow lived through the ’48. He was a young man then. Do you imagine he was the least bit thrilled over it—over
