"We have
only three rooms downstairs and if anybody comes to visit us we shall
not know whither to turn. Don't you think one could make two handsome
guest rooms out of the social room? This would just suit mama. She
could sleep in the back room and would have the view of the river and
the two moles, and from the front room she could see the city and the
Dutch windmill. In Hohen-Cremmen we have even to this day only a
German windmill. Now say, what do you think of it? Next May mama will
surely come."
Innstetten agreed to everything, only he said finally: "That is all
very well. But after all it will be better if we give your mama rooms
over in the district councillor's office building. The whole second
story is vacant there, just as it is here, and she will have more
privacy there."
That was the result, so to speak, which the first walk around through
the house accomplished. Effi then made her toilette, but not so
quickly as Innstetten had supposed, and now she was sitting in her
husband's room, turning her thoughts first to the little Chinaman
upstairs, then to Gieshuebler, who still did not come. To be sure, a
quarter of an hour before, a stoop-shouldered and almost deformed
little gentleman in an elegant short fur coat and a very
smooth-brushed silk hat, too tall for his proportions, had walked
past on the other side of the street and had glanced over at her
window. But that could hardly have been Gieshuebler. No, this
stoop-shouldered man, who had such a distinguished air about him, must
have been the presiding judge, and she recalled then that she had once
seen such a person at a reception given by Aunt Therese, but it
suddenly occurred to her that Kessin had only a lower court judge.
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