The elder Kröger was telling the most delightful stories; and his son Justus, who sat with Dr. Grabow down at the bottom of the table, near the children, was chaffing Mamsell Jungmann. She screwed up her brown eyes and stood her knife and fork upright on the table and moved them back and forth. Even the Överdiecks were very lively. Old Frau Överdieck had a new pet name for her husband: “You good old bell-wether,” she said, and laughed so hard that her cap bobbed up and down. But all the various conversations around the table flowed together in one stream when Jean Jacques Hoffstede embarked upon his favourite theme, and began to describe the Italian journey which he had taken fifteen years before with a rich Hamburg relative. He told of Venice, Rome, and Vesuvius, of the Villa Borghese, where Goethe had written part of his Faust; he waxed enthusiastic over the beautiful Renaissance fountains that wafted coolness upon the warm Italian air, and the formal gardens through the avenues of which it was so enchanting to stroll. Some one mentioned the big wilderness of a garden outside the Castle Gate, that belonged to the Buddenbrooks. “Upon my word,” the old man said, “I still feel angry with myself that I have never put it into some kind of order. I was out there the other day--and it is really a disgrace, a perfect primeval forest. It would be a pretty bit of property, if the grass were cut and the trees trimmed into formal shapes.” The Consul protested strenuously. “Oh, no, Papa! I love to go out there in the summer and walk in the undergrowth; it would quite spoil the place to trim and prune its free natural beauty.” “But, deuce take it, the free natural beauty belongs to me--haven’t I the right to put it in order if I like?” “Ah, Father, when I go out there and lie in the long grass among the undergrowth, I have a feeling that I belong to nature and not she to me....” “Krishan, don’t eat too much,” the old man suddenly called out, in dialect. “Never mind about Tilda--it doesn’t hurt her. She can put it away like a dozen harvest hands, that child!” And truly it was amazing, the prowess of this scraggy child with the long, old-maidish face. Asked if she wanted more soup, she answered in a meek drawling voice: “Ye-es, ple-ase.” She had two large helpings both of fish and ham, with piles of vegetables; and she bent short-sightedly over her plate, completely absorbed in the food, which she chewed ruminantly, in large mouthfuls. “Oh, Un-cle,” she replied, with amiable simplicity, to the old man’s gibe, which did not in the least disconcert her. She ate: whether it tasted good or not, whether they teased her or not, she smiled and kept on, heaping her plate with good things, with the instinctive, insensitive voracity of a poor relation--patient, persevering, hungry, and lean. CHAPTER VI