"If you really do wish to lunch with me, Doctor von Kammacher, you must not have high-flown notions, like Mr. Ritter," said Miss Burns halting in front of a tidy little restaurant.
They entered a low room with a red brick floor and panelled walls and ceiling. Owing to the enormous timber resources of their country, the Americans make a very free, though refined use of wood. The clean little room was frequented by German barbers, riding-masters, coachmen, and clerks. An inexpensive lunch and the usual American drinks were dispensed at the bar. The corner where the proprietor sat was decorated with a small collection of sporting pictures, well-known jockeys with their horses, acrobats, and baseball champions. Something in his appearance suggested that at night he had different customers to deal with than in the daytime, that his athletic figure—he was neatly dressed, but in his shirt sleeves—was meant to inspire respect in his clients. Frederick still suffered from too much breeding, and he was secretly astonished that Eva Burns ventured into such a place.
"You are late, Miss Burns. Aren't you feeling well?" inquired the host, with an immobile mask-like seriousness of expression.
"Oh, yes, Mr. Brown. I'm always all right," Miss Burns answered brightly. "Bring me my regular lunch. But the gentleman, I am afraid, will not be satisfied with it. Perhaps you have something special for him?"
Frederick, however, insisted upon ordering the very same as Miss Burns.
"I give you fair warning," she said when they were alone, "I really don't think you will be satisfied with my diet. I never eat meat, I want you to know, and you surely do."
Frederick laughed. "We physicians," he said, "are also coming more and more to give up a meat diet."
"I think it is horrible to eat meat," said Miss Burns. "I have a handsome fowl in my garden. I see it every day, and then I go and cut its throat and eat it up. When we were children, we had a pony which had to be killed, and the people in the East End ate it." She drew her long kid gloves from her hands without removing them from her arms. "People eat dogs, too. I adore dogs. But the worst thing is the frightful, endless shedding of blood which human meat-eaters deem necessary for their preservation. Think of all the butchers in the world, think of those immense slaughter-houses in Chicago and other places where the machine-like, wholesale murder of innocent animals is constantly going on. People can live without meat. It isn't indispensable to their welfare."
She said all this in a tone of seriousness tinged with humour, speaking a correct, though somewhat laboured German.
"For various reasons," Frederick said, "I still hesitate to form a definite opinion in regard to meat-eating. As for myself, I can do very well without meat, provided I have my steak regularly every day for lunch and my roast beef for dinner."