The Solitary Summer

"Snails," I replied promptly, wholly unchastened by the prayers I had just been writing out in every tense. "Snails! Ekelig." And she waved the waiter loftily away, and looked on with much superciliousness at the rest of us enjoying ourselves. "What! You do not eat this excellent ragout?" asked her other neighbour, a hot man, as he finished clearing his plate and had time to observe the emptiness of hers. "You do not like calves' tongues and mushrooms? Sonderbar." I still can see the poor lady's face as she turned on me more like a tigress than the impassive person she had been a moment before. "Sie unverschamter Backfisch!" she hissed. "My favourite dish--I have you to thank for spoiling my repast--my day!" And in a frenzy of rage she gripped my arm as though she would have shaken me then and there in the face of the multitude, while I sat appalled at the consequences of indulging a playful fancy at the wrong time. Which story, now I come to think of it, illustrates less the tremendous importance of food in our country than the exceeding odiousness of Backfisch in scarlet coats.