“Hanno,” said the Senator, curtly. And little Johann stopped, swallowed, and said quickly and softly: “Yes, Papa.”
“I have some important business with this gentleman,” his father went on. “Will you stand before the door into the smoking-room and take care that nobody—absolutely nobody, you understand—disturbs us?”
“Yes, Papa,” said little Johann, and took up his post before the door, which closed after the two gentlemen.
He stood there, clutching his sailor’s knot with one hand, felt with his tongue for a doubtful tooth, and listened to the earnest subdued voices which could be heard from inside. His head, with the curling light-brown hair, he held on one side, and his face with the frowning brows and blue-shadowed, gold-brown eyes, wore that same displeased and brooding look with which he had inhaled the odour of the flowers, and that other strange, yet half-familiar odour, by his grandmother’s bier.
Ida Jungmann passed and said, “Well, little Hanno, why are you hanging about here?”
And the hump-backed apprentice came out of the office with a telegram, and asked for the Senator.
But, both times, little Johann put his arm in its blue sailor sleeve with the anchor on it horizontally across the door; both times he shook his head and said softly, after a pause, “No one may go in. Papa is making his will.”
CHAPTER VI
In the autumn Dr. Langhals said, making play like a woman with his beautiful eyes: “It is the nerves, Senator; the nerves are to blame for everything. And once in a while the circulation is not what it should be. May I venture to make a suggestion? You need another little rest. These few Sundays by the sea, during the summer, haven’t amounted to much, of course. It’s the end of September, Travemünde is still open, there are still a few people there. Drive over, Senator, and sit on the beach a little. Two or three weeks will do you a great deal of good.”
And Thomas Buddenbrook said “yes” and “amen.” But when he told his family of the arrangement, Christian suggested going with him.