Four weeks after her arrival she entered the dining-room fresh from a second examination, tossing her little handbag in the air, and crying out in her fresh young voice: “Hurrah, hurrah! I shall have to stop a year!”⁠—at which the whole room resounded with Homeric laughter. But two weeks later the whisper went round that Lawyer Einhuf had behaved like a blackguard to Fränzchen Oberdank. The expression is ours, or, rather, Hans Castorp’s; for those who spread the news found it too old a story to be moved to the use of strong language. They shrugged their shoulders and gave it out as their view that it took two to play at such games, and that it was unlikely anything had happened against the will of either participant. This, at least, was Frau Stöhr’s demeanour, her ethical reaction to the affair in question.