“They take neither sugar nor milk, do they? and a slice of lemon floating in the tea?”
They were moving back to their places. He assented.
“And who are the only people in Europe who understand coffee?” she asked.
“Undoubtedly the French.”
“Ah, you mean the café au lait—with the milk and coffee both boiling and poured in together? I like it that way, but not with too much milk. We had a french cook once who used to make it for us, and, as I liked it, of course I found out how to make it myself.”
“Yes,” he said, “certainly coffee with cold milk is a barbarism; but the shape in which I like coffee best is as, what the French call, café noir.”
Miss Medwin said she had never seen it in that way, and, in answer to Gildea’s slight expression of surprise, explained that she had never been in France. Gildea described the café noir and the proper manner in which to drink it.
“You fill the spoon with cognac,” he said, “into which you put a lump of sugar—In France the sugar is in little thin slabs, not, as with us, in squares—and then you set the cognac alight. This melts down the sugar and, when all the spirit is burnt up, except that which saturates the sugar, and goes out, you put in your spoon. The flavour of burnt sugar and cognac is pleasant.”
“It is indeed, Sir Horace,” said Alcock, tired of playing the part of silent member in the other conversation, “I drank it that way myself in Paris. A friend of mine, an American told me of it. Paris is a very pleasant place. You have a treat in store for you, going there, Miss Medwin.”