“What shall we call this meal?” he asked, as the waiter disappeared to bring the repast to the table. “It is too late for the Mittagessen, and too early for the Abendbrod. Can you suggest a name?”
“At home it would be just the time for afternoon tea.”
“Ah, yes! Your English afternoon tea is very—” He stopped suddenly.
“Have you been in England?”
“This is just the time at which we drink our afternoon coffee in Germany,” said he, looking at me with his impenetrably bright eyes, just as if he had never heard me. “When the ladies all meet together to talk scan—O, behüte! What am I saying?—to consult seriously upon important topics, you know. There are some low-minded persons who call the whole ceremony a Klatsch—Kaffeeklatsch. I am sure you and I shall talk seriously upon important subjects, so suppose we call this our Kaffeeklatsch, although we have no coffee to it.”
“Oh, yes, if you like.”
He put a piece of cutlet upon my plate, and poured yellow wine into my glass. Endeavoring to conduct myself with the dignity of a grown-up person and to show that I did know something, I inquired if the wine were hock.
He smiled. “It is not Hochheimer—not Rheinwein at all—he—no, it, you say—it is Moselle wine—‘Doctor.’”
“Doctor?”
“Doctorberger; I do not know why so called. And a very good fellow too—so say all his friends, of whom I am a warm one. Try him.”