ine early, even where there are
children; while the kitchen dinner, that meal of supreme importance
here, is eaten when the family has finished theirs, and is as informal
as the meal a bird makes of berries. In a German household, living on
a small income, nothing is wasted,--not fuel, not food, not cleaning
materials, as far as possible not time. The _tuechtige Hausfrau_ would
be made miserable by having to pay and feed a woman who put on gala
clothes at midday, and did no work to soil them after that.

"Two girls," I once heard a German say to an Englishwoman who had just
described her own modest household which she ran, she said, with two
maids. "Two girls ... for you and your husband. But what, I ask you,
does the second one do?"

"She cleans the rooms and waits at table and opens the door," said the
Englishwoman.

"All that can one girl do just as well. I assure you it is so. There
cannot possibly be work in your household for two girls. You have told
me how quietly you live, and I know what English cooking is, if you
can call it cooking."

"You see, there must be someone to open the door."

"Why could one girl not answer the door, ... unless she was washing.
Then you would naturally go yourself."

"But it wouldn't be natural in England," said the Englishwoman. "It
would be odd. Besides, if you only have one servant, she can't dress
for lunch."

"Why should she dress for lunch?" asked the German. "My Auguste is a
pearl, but she only dresses when we have _Gesellschaft_. Then she
wears a plaid blouse and a garnet brooch that I gave her last
Christmas, and she looks very well in them. But every day ... and for
lunch, when half the work of the day is still to be done.... What,
then, does your second girl do in the afternoons?"

"She brings tea and answers the door."

"Always the door. But your husband is not a doctor or a dentist. Why
do so many people come to your door that you need a whole girl to
attend to them?"

"Oh! They don't," said the Englishwoman, getting rather worn. "There
are very few, really. It's the custom."

"Ah!" said the German, with a long deep breath of satisfaction. "So
are you English ... such slaves to custom. _Gott sei Dank_ that I do
not live in a country where I should have to keep a girl in idleness
for the sake of the door. With us a door is a door. Anyone who happens
to be near opens it."

"I know they do," said the Englishwoman, "and when a servant comes she
expects you t