“All right, Ida. You will wake me at six o’clock?”
“Half-past is early enough, child. The carriage is ordered for eight. Go on sleeping, so you will look fresh and pretty.”
“Oh, I haven’t slept at all yet.”
“Now, Tony, that is a bad child. Do you want to look all knocked up for the picnic? Drink seven swallows of water, and then lie down and count a thousand.”
“Oh, Ida, do come here a minute. I can’t sleep, I tell you, and my head aches for thinking. Feel—I think I have some fever, and there is something the matter with my tummy again. Or is it because I am anæmic? The veins in my temples are all swollen and they beat so that it hurts; but still, there may be too little blood in my head.”
A chair was pushed back, and Ida Jungmann’s lean, vigorous figure, in her unfashionable brown gown, appeared between the portières.
“Now, now, Tony—fever? Let me feel, my child—I’ll make you a compress.”
She went with her long firm masculine tread to the chest for a handkerchief, dipped it into the water-basin, and, going back to the bed, laid it on Tony’s forehead, stroking her brow a few times with both hands.
“Thank you, Ida; that feels good.—Oh, please sit down a few minutes, good old Ida. Sit down on the edge of the bed. You see, I keep thinking the whole time about tomorrow. What shall I do? My head is going round and round.”
Ida sat down beside her, with her needle and the stocking drawn over the darner again in her hand, and bent over them the smooth grey head and the indefatigable bright brown eyes. “Do you think he is going to propose tomorrow?” she asked.
“No doubt of it at all. He won’t lose this opportunity. It happened with Clara on just such an expedition. I could avoid it, of course, I could keep with the others all the time and not let him get near me. But then, that would settle it! He is leaving day after tomorrow, he said, and he cannot stay any longer if nothing comes of it today. It must be decided today.—But what shall I say, Ida, when he asks me? You’ve never been married, so of course you know nothing about life, really; but you are a truthful woman, and you have some sense—and you are forty-two years old! Do tell me what you think.—I do so need advice!”
Ida Jungmann let the stocking fall into her lap.
“Yes, yes, Tony child, I have thought a great deal about it. But what I think is, there is nothing to advise about. He can’t go away without speaking to you and your Mamma, and if you didn’t want him, you should have sent him away before now.”
“You are right there, Ida; but I could not do it—I suppose because it is to be! But now I keep thinking: ‘It isn’t too late yet; I can still draw back!’ So I am living here tormenting myself—”
“Do you like him, Tony? Tell me straight out.”
“Yes, Ida. It would not be the truth if I should say no. He is not handsome—but that isn’t the important thing in this life; and he is as good as gold, and couldn’t do anything mean—at least, he seems so to me. When I think about Grünlich—oh, goodness! He was all the time saying how clever and resourceful he was, and all the time hiding his villainy. Permaneder is not in the least like that. You might say he is too easygoing and takes life too comfortably—and that is a fault too; because he will never be a millionaire that way, and he really is too much inclined to let things go and muddle along—as they say down there. They are all like that down there, Ida—that is what I mean. In Munich, where he was among his own kind and everybody spoke and looked as he does, I fairly loved him, he seemed so nice and faithful and comfy. And I noticed it was mutual—but part of that, I dare say, was that he takes me for a rich woman, richer probably than I am; because Mother cannot do much more for me, as you know. But I hardly think that will make much difference to him—a great lot of money would not be to his taste.—But—what was I saying, Ida?”
“That is in Munich, Tony. But here—”
“Oh, here, Ida! You know how it was already: up here he was torn right out of his own element and set against everybody here, and they are all ever so much stiffer, and—more dignified and serious. Here I really often blush for him, though it may be unworthy of me. You know—it even happened several times that he said ‘me’ instead of ‘I.’ But they say that down there; even the most cultured people do, and it doesn’t hurt anything—it slips out once in a while and nobody minds. But up here—here sits Mother on one side and Tom on the other, looking at him and lifting their eyebrows, and Uncle Justus gives a start and fairly snorts, the way the Krögers do, and Pfiffi Buddenbrook gives her Mother a look, or Friederike or Henriette, and I feel so mortified I want to run out of the room, and it doesn’t seem as if I could marry him—”
“Oh, childie—it would be Munich that you would live in with him.”
“You are right, Ida. But the engagement!—and if I have to feel the whole time mortified to death before the family and the Kistenmakers and the Möllendorpfs, because they think he is common—Oh, Grünlich was much more refined, though he was certainly black within, as Herr Stengel would have said.—Oh, Ida, my head! do wet the compress again.”
“But it must be so, in the end,” she went on again, drawing a long breath as the compress went on; “for the
