d
out the young ladies in their morning wrappers helped to do it. They
helped with the ironing too and the cooking, and did all the mending
of linen and clothes. "A child's time belongs to her parents," said
the father one day when the elder daughter wanted to skate, but was
told that she could not be spared. "I've had a heavenly time," said a
girl friend who had been laid up for some weeks with a sprained ankle;
"I've had nothing to do but read and amuse myself." The household
work, however, was usually done before the one o'clock dinner, and the
afternoon was given up to skating, walks, and visits. There were not
so many formal calls paid as in England, but there was a constant
interchange of hospitality amongst the members of the family, the kind
of intimate unceremonious entertaining described in Miss Austen's
novels. Every time one of the many small children had a birthday there
was a feast of chocolate and cakes, a gathering of the whole clan. The
birthday cake had a sugared _Spruch_ on it, and a little lighted
candle for each year of the child's age, and the birthday table had a
present on it from everyone who came to the party, and many who did
not. Once a week the married daughters and their husbands came to
supper with my hosts, and every day when they were not coming to
supper they called on their mother, and if she could coax them to stay
drank their afternoon coffee with her. Sometimes one or two strangers
were asked to coffee, for this household was an old-fashioned one, and
gave you good coffee rather than wishy-washy tea. It made a point of
honour of a _Meringuetorte_ when strangers came, and of the little
chocolate cream cakes Germans call Othellos. But it must not be
supposed that one or two strangers constitute a _Kaffee-Klatsch_, that
celebrated form of entertainment where at every sip a reputation dies.
A genuine _Klatsch_ was, however, given during my stay by a young
married woman who wished to entertain her friends and display her
furniture. About twenty ladies were invited, and when they had
assembled they were solemnly conducted through every room of the flat
from the drawing-room to the spick-and-span kitchen, where every pan
was of shining copper and every cloth embroidered with the bride's
monogram. The procession as it filed through the rooms chattered like
magpies, for except myself every member of it had been to school with
the bride, and had helped to adorn her home with embroidered chair