with her ... until you got home. But to hear
the supreme excellence of the _Hausfrau_ contested takes the breath
away; to see her deposed from the first place by one of her own
countrywomen dazzles the eyes. It was a new idea to me that any women
in the world except the Germans kept house at all. If you live amongst
Germans when you are young you adopt this view quite insensibly and
without argument.

"My son is in England," you hear a German mother say. "I am uneasy
about him. I fear he may marry an Englishwoman."

"They sometimes do," says her gossip, shaking her head.

"It would break my heart. The women of that nation know nothing of
housekeeping. They sit in their drawing-rooms all day, while their
husband's hard-earned money is wasted in the kitchen. Besides ...
_mein armer Karl_--he loves _Nudelsuppe_ and _Kueken mit Spargel_. What
does an Englishwoman know of such things? She would give him cold
mutton to eat, and he would die of an indigestion. I was once in
England in my youth, and when I got back we had a _Frikassee von
Haehnchen mit Krebsen_ for dinner, and I wept with pleasure."

"Perhaps," says the gossip consolingly, "your Karl will remember these
things and fetch himself a German wife."

"Poor girl!" says Karl's not-to-be-consoled mother, "she would have to
live in England and keep house there. It happened to my niece Greta
Loehring. She had a new cook every fortnight, and each one was worse
than the one before. In England when a cook spoils a pudding she puts
it in the fire and makes another. Imagine the eggs that are used under
such circumstances."

I remember this little dialogue, because I was young and ignorant
enough at the time to ask what a German did when she spoilt a pudding,
and was promptly informed that in Germany such things could not
happen. A cook was not allowed to make puddings unless her mistress
stood by and saw that she made them properly; "unless she is a
_perfekte Koechin_," added Karl's mother, "and then she does not spoil
things."

A German friend, not the travelled one, but a real home-baked domestic
German, took me one hot afternoon this summer to pay a call, and at
once fell to talking to the mistress of the house about the washing of
lace curtains. There were eight windows in front of the flat, and each
window had a pair of stiff spotless lace curtains, and each curtain
had been washed by the lady's own hands. My friend had just washed
hers, and they both approached