eps house in
the English way. Therefore mutton cold or hashed is her frequent
portion.

"How I hate hashed mutton," she sometimes says.

"Why do you have it, then?" says the husband, who has a genius for
asking apparently innocent but really provoking questions.

"What else can I have?" says the wife.

"Eel in jelly," says the husband. He once tasted it in Berlin, and it
must have given him a mental shock; for whenever his wife approaches
him with a domestic difficulty, asks him, for instance, what he would
like for breakfast, he suggests this inaccessible and uninviting dish.

"There is never anything to eat in England except mutton and
apple-tart," says the wife. "Your plain cooks can't cook anything
else. They can't cook those really. Think of a German apple-tart--"

"Why should I? I don't want one."

"That's the hopeless part of it. You are all content with what Daudet
called your _abominable cuisine_. I thank him for the phrase. It is
descriptive."

"Oh, well," says the husband, "we're not a greedy nation."

So if this is the English point of view the less said about cakes the
better. And anyhow, it is in this country that afternoon tea is an
engaging meal. Berlin offers you tea nowadays, but it is never good,
and instead of freshly cut bread and butter they have horrid little
chokey biscuits flavoured with vanilla. Old-fashioned Germans used to
put a bit of vanilla in the tea-pot when they had guests they delighted
to honour, but they all know better than that nowadays. The milk is
often boiled milk, but even that scarcely explains why tea is so seldom
fit to drink in Germany. Supper is a light meal in most houses. The
English mutton bone is never seen, for when cold meat is eaten it is
cut in neat slices and put on a long narrow dish. But there is nearly
always something from the nearest _Delikatessen_ shop with it,--slices
of ham or tongue, or slices of one or two of the various sausages of
Germany: _Blutwurst_, _Mettwurst_, _Schinkenwurst_, _Leberwurst_, all
different and all good. When a hot dish is served it is usually a light
one, often an omelette or some other preparation of eggs; and in spring
eggs and bits of asparagus are a great deal cooked together in various
ways: not asparagus heads so often as short lengths of the stalk sold
separately in the market, and quite tender when cooked. There is nearly
always a salad with the cold meat or a dish of the salted cucumbers
that make such a good pic