Hermann Sudermann doc The Undying Past (Classic Reprint)

The other youth, equally gigantic and fairhaired, and perhaps a trifle more phlegmatic, followed. They threw open on either side the carriage doors, and, with an action of the arm that seemed borrowed from a Court quadrille, assisted the stupendous female form sitting on the front seat of the carriage to alight. With swelling bosom and wide-spreading hips, her fat hands imprisoned in new light kid gloves, her grey gauze veil thrown back, displaying a snub nose, the lady calmly descended, with a glance over her shoulder of somewhat sharp disapproval at the old gen eman who followed her. Leave me alone, boys, he snapped, when his sons would have helped him too. Your broken-down old father is still able to help himself. He threw off his dust-coat on the seat behind him, and with an elastic bound sprang down without touching the carriage steps. He stood there, a dapper figure in his short, elegantly cut coat, his little eyes twinkling with self-satisfaction out of a face lined from fast living, the cheeks of which hung down on either side of an aggressively curled-up grey moustache. He had tp look up to his wife and sons, who were all more than a head taller than himself. The party entered the small waiting-room reserved for first-class passengers, which, besides two bare polished tables, and portraits in lithograph, veiled in green gauze, of the coimty nobility and gentry, boasted nothing but apparatuses for the annihilation of flies; which consisted of a glass bottle full of soapy water, two plates containing poisoned paper, and a few glasses covered with brandy-soaked bread bored with holes. Within and around these traps revolved hundreds of half-drowned and poisoned flies in their last death-struggle. The host of the restaurant offered his refreshments to the Herr Baron Knigsberg beer or tea, also an incomparably fine brew of lemonade, were to be had. Herr v(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)