We at once revived into a brisk attention.
'A door is a characteristic—'
'A most excellent word,' said Papa encouragingly. 'Continue, my dear.'
'It is a characteristic of buildings that are massive and that have windows and chimneys like other buildings.'
'Excellent, excellent,' said Papa. 'Definitions are never easy.'
'And—and tents don't have them,' finished Tante Else, looking round at us with a sort of mild surprise at having succeeded in talking so much about something that was neither neighbors nor housekeeping.
'Quatsch,' said Onkel Heinrich.
'My dear,' protested Tante Else, forced at last to notice these comments.
'I say it is quatsch,' said Onkel Heinrich with a volcanic vehemence startling in one so trim.
'Really, my dear,' said Tante Else.