or struggles, she is always happy." In such remarks there was always as much contempt as envy. Con-tempt was a weakness of Sesemi's--perhaps a pardonable one. The small red-brick suburban house was surrounded by a neatly kept garden. Its lofty ground floor was entirely taken up by schoolrooms and dining-room; the bedrooms were in the upper story and the attic. Miss Weichbrodt did not have a large number of pupils. As boarders she received only older girls, while the day-school consisted of but three classes, the lowest ones. Sesemi took care to have only the daugh- ters of irreproachably refined families in her house. Tony Buddenbrook, as we have seen, she welcomed most tenderly. She even made "bishop" for supper--a sort of sweet red punch to be taken cold, in the making of which she was a past mistress. "A little more beeshop," she urged with a hearty nod. It sounded so tempting; nobody could resist! Fraulein Weu-hbrodt sat on two sofa-cushions at the top of the table and presided over the meal with tact and discretion. She held her stunted figure stiffly erect, tapped vigilantly on the table, cried "Nally" or "Babby," and subdued Mile. Popinet with a glance whenever the latter seemed about to take unto herself all the cold veal jelly. Tony had been al-lotted a place between two other boarders, Armgard von Schil-ling, the strapping blond daughter of a Mecklenburg land-owner, and Gerda Arnoldsen, whose home was in Amsterdam--an unusual, elegant figure, with dark red hair, brown eyes close together, and a lovely, pale, haughty face. Opposite her sat a chattering French girl who looked like a negress, with huge. gold earrings. The lean English Miss Brown, wilh her sourish smile, sat at the bottom of the table. She was a boarder too. It was not hard, with the help of Sesemi's bishop, to get acquainted. Mile. Popinet had had nightmares again last night--ah, quel horreur! She usually screamed "Help, thieves; help, thieves!" until everybody jumped out of bed. Next, it appeared that Gerda Arnoldsen did not take piano like the rest of them, but the violin, and that Papa--her Mother was dead--had promised her a real Stradivarius. Tony was not musical--hardly any of the Buddenbrooks and none of the Kr�s were. She could not even recognize the chorals they played at St. Mary's.--Oh, the organ in the new Church at Amsterdam had a vox humana--a human voice--that was just wonderful. Armgard von Schilling talked about the cows at home. It was Armgard who from the earliest moment had made a great impression on Tony. She was the first person from a 85 noble family whom Tony had ever known. What luck, to be called von Schilling! Her own parents had the most beauti-ful old house in the town, and her grandparents belonged to the best families; still, they were called plain Buddenbrook and Kr�--which was a pity, to be sure. The grand-daughter of the proud Lebrecht Kr� glowed with reverence for Armgard's noble birth. Privately, she sometimes thought that the splendid "von" went with her better than it did with Armgard; for Armgard did not appreciate her good luck, dear, no! She had a thick pigtail, good-natured blue eyes, and a broad Mecklenburg accent, and went about thinking just nothing at all on the subject. She made absolutely no pretentions to being aristocratic; in fact, she did not know what it was. But the word "aristocratic" stuck in Tony's small head; and she emphatically applied it to Gerda Arnoldsen. Gerda was rather exclusive, and had something foreign and queer about her. She liked to do up her splendid red hair in striking ways, despite Sesemi's protests. Some of the girls thought it was "silly" of her to play the violin instead of the piano--and, be it known, "silly" was a term of very severe condemnation. Still, the girls mostly agreed with Tony that Gerda was aristocratic--in her figure, well-devel-oped for her years; in her ways, her small possessions, every-thing. There was the ivory toilet set from Paris, for instance;
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