Therewith she excused herself and went up to the gable room which had been prepared in the meantime. The hostess, who was indulging in all sorts of mistaken conjectures, accompanied her, and immediately asked with much curiosity, "What really was the matter," and without waiting for an answer, she went right on: yes, it was always so with young women, she remembered that herself, and before her eldest was born (she now had four and would have had five, but the middle one had come too soon and did not live), she had had just such a time. It just rushed over one so, and one felt ready to die. But a cup of balm tea, that is to say, the genuine monastery balm, would give a quick relief and one would feel like a fish in the water and quite set up and merry and affectionate too. "Yes, yes, gracious lady, when one has four, without counting the little angel ..."
Lena had some difficulty in concealing her embarrassment and asked, for the sake of saying something, for a cup of the monastery balm tea, of which she had already heard.
While this conversation was going on up in the gable room, Botho had taken a seat, not in the sheltered veranda, but at a primitive wooden table that was nailed on four posts in front of the veranda and afforded a fine view. He planned to take his evening meal here. He ordered fish, and as the "tench and dill" for which the tavern was famous was brought, the host came to ask what kind of wine the Herr Baron desired? (He gave him this title by mere chance.)
"I think," said Botho, "Brauneberger, or let us say rather Rudesheimer would suit the delicate fish best, and to show that the wine is good you must sit down with me as my guest and drink some of your own wine."
The host bowed smilingly and soon came back with a dusty bottle, while the maid, a pretty Wendin in a woolen gown and a black head-kerchief, brought the glasses on a tray.
"Now let us see," said Botho. "The bottle promises all sorts of good qualities. Too much dust and cobweb is always suspicious, but this ... Ah, superb! This is the vintage of '70, is it not? And now we must drink, but to what? To the prosperity of Hankel Ablage."
The host was evidently delighted, and Botho, who saw what a good impression he was making, went on speaking in his own gentle and friendly way: "I find it charming here, and there is only one thing to be said against Hankel's Ablage: its name."
"Yes," agreed the host, "the name might be better and it is really unfortunate for us. And yet there is a reason for the name, Hankel's Ablage really was an Ablage, and so it is still called."
"Very good. But this brings us no further forward than before. Why is it called an Ablage? And what is an Ablage?"
"Well, it is as much as to say a place for loading and unloading. The whole stretch of land hereabouts (and he pointed backward) was, in fact, always one great domain, and was called under Old Fritz and even earlier under the warrior kings the domain Wusterhausen. And the thirty villages as well as the forest and moorland all belonged to it. Now you see the thirty villages naturally had to obtain and use many things, or what amounts to the same thing, they had to have egress and ingress, and for both they needed from the beginning a harbor or a place to buy and sell, and the only doubt would have been what place they should choose for the purpose. They actually chose this place; this bay became a harbor, a mart, an 'Ablage' for all that came and went, and since the fisher who lived here at that time was my grandfather Hankel, the place became 'Hankel's Ablage'."