BUDDENBROOKS
mountain-climbing with knapsack and alpenstock, the Frau Consul rewarding him with many an admiring “You don’t say!” He came by some train of thought or other to Christian, and expressed the most lively regret for his absence—he had heard what a jolly chap he was.
“He varies,” the Consul said drily. “On a party like this he is inimitable, it is true.—We shall have crabs to eat, Herr Permaneder,” he said in a livelier tone; “crabs and Baltic shrimps! You have had them a few times already at my Mother’s, but friend Dieckmann, the owner of the ‘Giant Bush,’ serves especially fine ones. And ginger nuts, the famous ginger-nuts of these parts. Has their fame reached even as far as the Isar? Well, you shall try them.”
Two or three times Frau Grünlich stopped the wagon to pick poppies and corn-flowers by the roadside, and each time Herr Permaneder testified to his desire to get out and help her, if it were not for his slight nervousness at climbing in and out of the wagon.
Erica rejoiced at every crow she saw; and Ida Jungmann, wearing her mackintosh and carrying her umbrella, as she always did even in the most settled weather, rejoiced with her like a good governess who shares not only outwardly but inwardly in the childish emotions of her charge. She entered heartily into Erica’s pleasure, with her rather loud laugh that sounded like a horse neighing. Gerda, who had not seen her growing grey in the family service, looked at her repeatedly with cold surprise.
They were in Oldenberg. The beech groves came in sight. They drove through the village, across the market square with its well, and out again into the country, over the bridge that spanned the little river Au, and finally drew up in front of the one-story inn, “The Giant Bush.” It stood at the side of a flat open space laid out with lawns and sandy paths and country flower-beds; beyond it, the forest rose gradually like an amphitheatre. Each stage was reached by rude steps formed from the natural rocks and tree roots; and on each
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