Both children wore thick, embroidered modern “art” dresses of a brick-red colour, which had in their time been worn by Bert and Ingrid, and which were both alike, with the single exception that Biter’s revealed a pair of short tiny trousers under the skirt. Both wore their hair bobbed in precisely the same manner. Biter’s hair was irregularly blond, and still in the process of slowly darkening. It was awkward, stubborn hair, very bristly, and resembled a funny little ill-fitting wig. Lorie’s, on the contrary, was chestnut-brown, silky, and glossy, and as agreeable as her entire little person. It covered her ears, which, as they all knew, were not alike in size, the one being of proper proportions, the other somewhat out of scale, decidedly too large. Her father at times laid bare these ears, and would then express his amazement in loud exclamations, as though he had never before observed this slight defect, something which at once amused and shamed Lorie. Her golden-brown eyes were wide apart, and full of a sweet, soft shimmer and the clearest and most lovable expression. Her eyebrows were fair. Her nose was still pudgy, with nostrils slightly thick, so that the openings were almost round; her little mouth was wide and very expressive, with a finely carved and mobile upper lip. When she laughed and showed her pearly but widely separated little teeth (she had lost only one so far—her father had forced the wobbly thing out with his handkerchief, which had caused her to grow very pale and to tremble), then dimples came into her cheeks, which in spite of their childish softness were given their somewhat hollow form by the slight projection of the lower half of her face. On one cheek, close to the soft fall of her hair, she had a downy mole.
On the whole, she was by no means satisfied with her appearance—a sign that it was a matter of concern to her. Her face, she sadly concluded, must, unfortunately, be regarded as plain; her “figger,” on the contrary, was quite nice. She loved choice, refined little expressions and used them in strings, such as “perhaps, to be sure, in the end.” Biter’s self-critical worries were more concerned with moral factors. He inclined to abject contrition, and considered himself on account of his fits of rage a great sinner who would never go to heaven. Arguments were futile, such as God’s having a great deal of consideration and not being always disposed to even up the odds. Biter would merely shake his head and that ill-fitting wig of his in a kind of obstinate melancholy, and declare that his chances of attaining heavenly felicity were absolutely nil. Whenever he caught cold, he appeared to be entirely full of phlegm, and one had only to touch him to make him wheeze and rattle; he was also disposed to have the highest possible fever at once, so that he panted. The nursemaid Anna was on such occasions inclined to the most sombre predictions in respect to his constitution and vouchsafed the opinion that a boy with such “uncommonly thick blood” might succumb to apoplexy at any moment. One day she thought that this terrible moment had really arrived. Biter, in punishment for a berserker-like fit of fury, had been put into a corner with his face to the wall, and had, upon chance inspection, revealed this face blue all over, much bluer than Anna’s own. She had drummed the whole house together, announcing loudly that the excessive thickness of the boy’s blood had brought about his last hour. The wicked Biter suddenly found himself, to his just amazement, overwhelmed with the tenderest solicitude, until it became clear that the blueness of his features was not due to congestion, but to the calcimined wall of the nursery, which had transferred some of its indigo to his tear-stained face.
Anna the nursemaid had also come in now and stood with folded hands near the doorway—a vision in a white apron, with oily hair, fishy eyes, and an expression revealing the rigorous dignity of her limitations. “The children,” she declared, proud of her care and training, “are deciphering themselves wonderfully.” She had recently had seventeen ragged stumps removed from her jaws, and an even set of yellow artificial teeth with dark-red gutta-percha gums fitted, which now beautified her stolid peasant face. Her mind was beset by the remarkable hallucination that this set of teeth was the talk of the whole neighbourhood, that the very sparrows on the roof had nothing else to chatter about. “There has been a lot of idle talk,” she said, in a severe and mysterious manner, “because, as you know, I have had a set of teeth made.” She had a constant inclination to the use of dark and murky speech, which others were incapable of penetrating, as, for example, concerning a certain Dr. Bleifuss, who was known to every child, “and there are others living in that house,” she said, “who pretend to be him!” One was forced to be lenient and ignore her utterances. She taught the children lovely verses, as, for example:
“Railway-train, railway-train,
Going or still,
Freight-train or passenger,
Whistle it will.”
Or that weekly bill of fare, so full of privations and yet so fitting to the times, which runs:
“Monday morn the week begins.
Tuesday minds us of our sins.
Wednesday is the middle of it.
Thursday brings us little profit.
Friday noon we eat the fish,
Saturday dance round the dish.
Sunday there’s a lovely roast,
And a salad too we boast.”
There was also a quatrain of incomprehensible and insoluble romanticism:
“Throw wide the door, throw wide the door,
Let the big carriage roll.
Who sits within it all in state?
A lord with hair of gold!”
And finally there was an outrageously vivacious ballad of Little Marie, who sat on a stone, a stone, a stone, and combed her likewise golden hair, golden hair, golden hair. And another of Rudolf,
