It was a curious party at the midday meal.  The old gentleman dined alone in his little room as usual.  The children too had been sent away, and did not come in again until after the meal.  The young wife was more in the kitchen or elsewhere out of the room than at the table; and if she did once sit down there for a few minutes, she was as dumb as she had been when Apollonius greeted her; the resentful cloud did not pass from her forehead.  Fritz was accustomed to his father’s condition, which pierced Apollonius’ heart with the keenness of new-felt pain.  He talked only of the old man’s oddities; old Blue-coat did not know what he wanted himself, and made life needlessly unpleasant for himself and all the others in the house.  If Apollonius began to talk of the business, of the repairs to be made to the roof of St. George’s, his brother spoke of pleasures with which he was glad to be able to make his brother’s stay with him more agreeable—­and he always mentioned this stay as he would a passing visit.  When Apollonius told him he had not come to enjoy himself but to work, he laughed as if it were an incomparable joke that Apollonius should want to help to do nothing, and showed that he understood wit, however dry might be its expression.  Then, when his wife had gone out of the room, he asked about his brother’s understanding with his cousin’s daughter, and then laughed again at his brother wag, in whom no one would recognize the old dreamer.

After dinner the children came in again, and with them more life and easy familiarity.  While the old conditions still confronted Apollonius as new and strange, to the children what was new had already become old and familiar.  All the afternoon Fritz, and apparently his wife too, were occupied only with a ball that was to be given.  Fritz forgot more and more whatever might have caused him uneasiness, in thinking of the impression that he, as the chief person, would make on the new-comer at the festivity, and made use of the time till it should begin in giving him a foretaste of the affair by means of tales and hints dropped of the honor and attention shown him on such occasions by the most prominent citizens.  He became noticeably more cheerful, and walked more and more proudly up and down the room.  The creaking of his well-polished shoes said for the present, before the guests at the ball could do so:  “Ah, there he is!  Ah, there he is!” And when at intervals he jingled the money in his trousers-pockets all the corners of the hall rang with:  “Now the fun will begin!  Now the fun will begin!” And thither among those who were welcoming the guests—­but he was no longer walking, he was gliding, swimming on the music—­every dance was a jubilant overture on the name Nettenmair—­he felt no floor, no feet, no legs beneath him, he scarcely still felt young Frau Nettenmair swimming along beside him, hanging to his right fin, the most beautiful among the beautiful, just as he was the most jovial among the jovial, the thumb on the hand of the ball.