If Stettin people of good standing
came to Berlin she called on them and invited them to dinner, when
her former celebrated triumphs in cookery were repeated. If she
found out that any wealthy inhabitants of Stettin had been in Berlin
without informing her of the fact, she took it so much to heart that
she had to go to bed for a week. A few Stettin families, who in the
course of the year emigrated to the capital, constituted her circle
of visiting acquaintances, enlarged later by Malvine's school
friends, and introductions at their houses. The connection with the
Ellrichs was through the Stettin circle. Frau Brohl gave a large
soiree twice in the course of the winter, when the invitations they
had received were returned. Since Malvine was grown up there had
been dancing, although the small size of the drawing-room, and the
displacement of all Frau Brohl's needlework, set everything in great
confusion.
This kind of life and its surroundings naturally could not develop
Malvine's mind and character in any high degree. She missed any
stimulus from her mother or from her grandmother; she only learned
to respect rich people, to fathom the mysteries of the kitchen, and
to cultivate a taste for peculiar and original fancy work; she was,
however, a good-tempered, rather slow-witted girl, of well-balanced
mind, without a trace of capriciousness or the nervous temperament
so common to city life; within her limited view of things she had a
good, honest intelligence, and with her plump figure and her round,
rosy face, which bore witness to her grandmother's kitchen, she was
very comely in men's eyes.
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