Wolfgang ate with a good appetite, with a specially big one even; he was quite ravenous. There were also lots of good things of which he was fond: hot fricassee of chicken with sweetbread, force-meat balls and crawfish tails, and then some very good cold meat, butter and cheese and young radishes.
"Boy, don't drink so much," said Paul Schlieben, as Wolfgang seized the decanter again.
"I'm thirsty," said his son with a certain defiance, filling his glass to the brim and drinking it in one gulp.
"That comes of revelling." His father shook his finger at him, but smiled at the same time.
"It comes of swilling," thought Käte, and she shuddered with disgust again. She had never used such an expression before even in her thoughts, but now none seemed strong, blunt, contemptuous enough.
There was no pleasant conversation in spite of the room being so cosy, the appointments of the table so beautiful, the flowers so prettily arranged in a cut-glass bowl on the white table-cloth, and above it all a soft subdued light under a green silk shade. Käte was so monosyllabic that Paul soon seized the newspaper, and the boy, after trying to stifle his yawns, at last got up. It was really too awfully slow to have to sit there. Should he drive into Berlin again or go to bed? He did not quite know himself what to do.
"You are going to bed now?" said his mother. It was intended for a question, but Käte heard herself that it did not sound like one.
"Of course he's going to bed now," said his father, looking up from his paper for a moment. "He's tired. Good night, my lad."
"I'm not tired." Wolfgang grew red and hot. What did they mean by wanting to persuade him that he was tired? He was no longer a child to be sent to bed. His mother's tone irritated him especially--"you are going to bed now"--that was an order.
The sparkle in his dark eyes became a blaze; the expression of defiance and refractoriness on his face was not pleasant to see. They could no doubt see in what a passion he was, but his father said "Good night," and held out his hand to him without looking up from the newspaper.