Consul Hagenström said very little--he was obviously planning. “Well, yes,” he kept saying, as he looked and turned away, suggesting by his manner that in case he bought the house all this would of course be different. He stood, with the same air, on the ground floor of the back building and looked up at the empty attic. “Yes, well,” he repeated, and set in motion the thick, rotting cable with a rusty iron hook on the end that had been hanging there for years. Then he turned on his heel. “Best thanks for your trouble, Herr Senator,” he said. “We’re at the end, I suppose.” He scarcely uttered a word on the rapid return to the front building, or later when the two gentlemen paid their respects to Frau Permaneder in the landscape-room and the Senator accompanied them down the steps and across the entry. But hardly had they said good-bye and Consul Hagenström turned with his companion to walk down the street, when it was seen that a very lively conversation began at once between the two. The Senator returned to the room where Frau Permaneder, with her severest manner, sat bolt upright in the window, knitting with two huge wooden needles a black worsted frock for her granddaughter Elisabeth, and now and then casting a glance into the gossip’s glass. Thomas walked up and down a while in silence, with his hands in his trousers pockets. “Yes, we have put it in the broker’s hands,” he said at length. “We must wait and see what comes of it. My opinion is that he will buy the whole property, live here in the front, and utilize the back part in some other way.” She did not look at him, or change her position, or cease to knit. On the contrary, the needles flew back and forth faster than ever. “Oh, certainly--of course he’ll buy it. He’ll buy the whole thing,” she said, and it was her throaty voice she used. “Why shouldn’t he buy it--you know? In fact, there would be no sense in that at all!” She raised her eyebrows and looked severely through her pince-nez--which she now used for sewing, but never managed to put on straight--at her knitting-needles. They flew like lightning round and round each other, clacking all the while. * * * * * Christmas came: the first Christmas without the Frau Consul. They spent the evening of the twenty-fourth at the Senator’s house, without the old Krögers and without the Misses Buddenbrook; for the old children’s day had now ceased to exist, and Thomas Buddenbrook did not feel like making presents to everybody who used to attend the Frau Consul’s celebration. Only Frau Permaneder and Erica, with little Elisabeth, Christian, Clothilde, and Mademoiselle Weichbrodt, were invited. The latter insisted on holding the customary present-giving on the twenty-fifth, in her own stuffy little rooms, where it was attended with the usual mishap.