"I believe he is," agreed Anna, going over to the white porcelain stove to warm her hands.
"He's the limpet, and you're going to be the rock. Don't let him fleece you too much."
"But limpets don't fleece rocks," said Anna.
"He wouldn't be able to fleece me, I know, if I could talk German as well as you do. But you'll be soft and weak and amiable, and he'll do as he likes with you."
"Soft, and weak, and amiable!" repeated Anna, smiling at Susie's adjectives, "why, I thought I was obstinate—you always said I was."
"So you are. But you won't be to that man. He'll get round you."
"Uncle Joachim said he was excellent."
"Oh, I daresay he wasn't bad with a man over him who knew all about farming, but mark my words, you won't get two thousand a year out of the place."
Anna was silent. Susie was invariably shrewd and sensible, if inclined, Anna thought, to be over suspicious, in matters where money was concerned. Dellwig's face was not one to inspire confidence: and his way of shouting when he talked, and of talking incessantly, was already intolerable to her. She was not sure, either, that his wife was any more satisfactory. She too shouted, and Anna detested noise. The wife did not appear again, and had evidently gone home with her husband, for a great silence had fallen upon the house, broken only by the monotonous sighing of the forest, and the pattering of rain against the window.
The dining-room was a long narrow room, with one big window forming its west end looking out on to the grass plot, the ditch, and the gate-posts with the eagles on them. It was a study in chocolate—brown paper, brown carpet, brown rep curtains, brown cane chairs. There were two wooden sideboards painted brown facing each other down at the dark end, with a collection of miscellaneous articles on them: a vinegar cruet that had stood there for years, with remains of vinegar dried up at the bottom; mustard pots containing a dark and wicked mixture that had once been mustard; a broken hand-bell used at long-past dinners, to summon servants long since dead; an old wine register with entries in it of a quarter of a century back; a mouldy bottle of Worcester sauce, still boasting on its label that it would impart a relish to viands otherwise dull; and some charming Dresden china fruit-dishes, adorned with cheerful shepherds and shepherdesses, incurable optimists, persistently pleased with themselves and their surroundings through all the days and nights of all the cold silent years that they had been smiling at each other in the dark. On the round dinner-table was a pot of lilies of the valley, enveloped in crinkly pink tissue paper tied round with pink satin ribbon, with ears of the paper drawn up between the flower-stalks to produce a pleasing contrast of pink and white.