The little girl began to be interested in her grandfather Jörg to whom she had not hitherto paid much attention. He was different from the Ulwings. The children thought him funny and often looked at each other knowingly behind his back while he was rubbing his hands and bowing with short brisk nods to the customers of his bookshop.
Anne blushed for him. She did not like to see him do this and her glance fell on grandfather Ulwing. He did not bow to anybody.
Ulrich Jörg’s bookshop was at the corner of Snake Street. A seat was fixed in the wall near the entrance in front of which an apple tree grew in the middle of the road. The passing carriages drove round it with much noise.
Anne thrust her head in at the door. Ulwing the builder removed his wide-brimmed grey beaver.
The perfume of the apple-blossom filled the shop. Grandfather Jörg came smiling to meet them; he emerged with short steps from behind a bookcase which, reaching up to the ceiling, divided the shop into two from end to end. The front part was used by ordinary customers. Behind the bookcase, shielded from the view of the street, some gentlemen sat, mostly in Magyar costumes, on a sofa near a tallow candle and conversed hurriedly, continuously.
They were more numerous than usual. A young man, wearing a dolman, sat in the middle on the edge of the writing table. His neck stretched bare from his soft open shirt collar. His hair was uncombed, his eyes were wonderfully large and aflame.
For the first time in her life Anne realized how beautiful the human eye could be. Then she noticed, however, that the young man’s worn-out boots were battering the brass fittings of Grandfather Jörg’s writing table while he was speaking and that his disorderly movements upset everything within his reach. She thought him wanting in respect. So she returned to the other side of the bookcase and resumed the reading of the book her grandfather had chosen for her. It was about a Scotch boy called Robinson Crusoe.
More people came to the shop. Nobody bought a book. And even the old men looked as if they were still young.
The feverish, clumsy man behind the bookcase went on talking and at times one could hear the heels of his boots knock against the brass fittings. Anne did not pay any attention to what he said. The book fascinated her. One word, however, did reach her ears several times from behind. But the word did not penetrate her intellect. It just remained a repeated sound.
In the middle of the shop stood a gentleman. He had a bony face and he wore a beard only under his chin. And from the pocket of his tight breeches a beribboned tobacco pouch dangled.