There are some interesting points about this budget as compared with an English one of £436. It will be seen that although meat is so dear in Germany the weekly butcher's bill for three people was only 6s., fish and poultry together only 2s., and the ham sausage, etc. from the provision shop under 1s. 6d. a week. The washing bill for the year is low, because nearly everything was washed at home, and dear as fuel is in Germany this household spent about £16, where an English one presenting the same front would spend £20 to £25. Observe, too, the amount spent on servants' wages by people who lived in a large charmingly furnished flat, and had a long visiting list. The wife, too, a very pretty woman and always well dressed, spent much less on her toilet than anyone would have guessed from its finish and variety, for she came from one of the German cities where women do dress well. There is nearly as much difference amongst German cities in this respect as there is amongst nations. Berlin is far behind either Hamburg or Frankfurt, for instance. The middle-class women of Berlin have an extraordinary affection all through the summer season for collarless blouses, bastard tartans, and white cotton gloves with thumbs but no fingers. In England the force of custom drives women to uncover their necks in the evening, whether it becomes them or not, and it is not a custom for which sensible elderly women can have much to say. But pneumonia blouses have never been universal wear in any country, and it is impossible to explain their apparently irresistible attraction for all ages and sizes of women in the Berlin electric cars. Those who were not wearing pneumonia blouses a year ago were wearing _Reform-Kleider_, shapeless ill-cut garments usually of grey tweed. The oddest combination, and quite a common one, was a sack-like _Reform-Kleid_, with a saucy little coloured bolero worn over it, fingerless gloves, and a madly tilted beflowered hat perched on a dowdy coiffure. These are rude remarks to make about the looks of foreign ladies, but the _Reform-Kleid_ is just as hideous and absurd in Germany now as our bilious green draperies were on the wrong people twenty-five years ago, and I am sure every foreigner who came to England must have laughed at them. On the whole, I would say of German women in general what a Frenchwoman once said to me in the most matter-of-fact tone of Englishwomen, _Elles s'habillent si mal_. FOOTNOTES: [2] Probably private charities. CHAPTER XVIII HOSPITALITY