last there came an invitation to Frau
Steinmann and to Anna Sartorius, to assist at a "coffee" of unusual
magnitude, and Frau Steinmann suggested that I should go with them and
see what it was like. Nothing loath, I consented.

"Bring some work," said Anna Sartorius to me, "or you will find it
_langweilig_--slow, I mean."

"Shall we not have some music?"

"Music, yes, the sweetest of all--that of our own tongues. You shall
hear every one's candid opinion of every one else--present company
always excepted, and you will see what the state of Elberthal society
really is--present company still excepted. By a very strange chance the
ladies who meet at a klatsch are always good, pious, virtuous, and,
above all, charitable. It is wonderful how well we manage to keep the
black sheep out, and have nothing but lambs immaculate."

"Oh, don't!"

"Oh, bah! I know the Elberthal _Klatscherei_. It has picked me to pieces
many a time. After you have partaken to-day of its coffee and its cakes,
it will pick you to pieces."

"But," said I, arranging the ruffles of my very best frock, which I had
been told it was _de rigueur_ to wear, "I thought women never gossiped
so much among men."

Fraeulein Sartorius laughed loud and long.

"The men! _Du meine Guete!_ Men at a kaffeeklatsch! Show me the one that
a man dare even look into, and I'll crown you--and him too--with laurel,
and bay, and the wild parsley. A man at a kaffee--_mag Gott es
bewahren!_"

"Oh!" said I, half disappointed, and with a very poor, mean sense of
dissatisfaction at having put on my pretty new dress for the first time
only for the edification of a number of virulent gossips.

"Men!" she reiterated with a harsh laugh as we walked toward the
Goldsternstrasse, our destination. "Men--no. We despise their company,
you see. We only talk about them directly or indirectly from the moment
of meeting to that of parting."

"I'm sorry there are no gentlemen," said I, and I was. I felt I looked
well.

Arrived at the scene of the kaffee, we were conducted to a bedroom where
we laid aside our hats and mantles. I was standing before the glass,
drawing a comb through my upturned hair, and contemplating with
irrepressible satisfaction the delicate lavender hue of my dress, when I
suddenly saw reflected behind me the dark, harshly cut face of Anna
Sartorius. She started slightly; then said, with a laugh which had in it
something a little forced:

"We are a contrast, aren'