“A pleasant man,” the Father said later, when he came back and took his place again.
“I think he’s silly,” Tony permitted herself to remark with some emphasis.
“Tony! Heavens and earth, what an idea!” said the Consul’s wife, displeased. “Such a Christian young man!”
“So well brought up, and so cosmopolitan,” went on the Consul. “You don’t know what you are talking about.” He and his wife had a way of taking each other’s side like this, out of sheer politeness. It made them the more likely to agree.
Christian wrinkled up his long nose and said, “He was so important. ‘You are conversing’—when we weren’t at all. And the roses over there ‘trim things up uncommonly.’ He acted some of the time as if he were talking to himself. ‘I am disturbing you’—‘I beg pardon’—‘I have never seen more beautiful hair.’” Christian mocked Herr Grünlich so cleverly that they all had to laugh, even the Consul.
“Yes, he gave himself too many airs,” Tony went on. “He talked the whole time about himself—his business is good, and he is fond of nature, and he likes such-and-such names, and his name is Bendix—what is all that to us, I’d like to know? Everything he said was just to spread himself.” Her voice was growing louder all the time with vexation. “He said all the very things you like to hear, Mamma and Papa, and he said them just to make a fine impression on you both.”
“That is no reproach, Tony,” the Consul said sternly. “Everybody puts his best foot foremost before strangers. We all take care to say what will be pleasant to hear. That is a commonplace.”
“I think he is a good man,” Clothilde pronounced with drawling serenity—she was the only person in the circle about whom Herr Grünlich had not troubled himself at all. Thomas refrained from giving an opinion.
“Enough,” concluded the Consul. “He is a capable, cultured, and energetic Christian man, and you, Tony, should try to bridle your tongue—a great girl of eighteen or nineteen years old, like you! And after he was so polite and gallant to you, too. We are all weak creatures; and you, let me say, are one of the last to have a right to throw stones. Tom, we’ll get to work.”
Pert little Tony muttered to herself “A golden goat’s beard!” and scowled as before.