Page:French life in town and country (1917).djvu/242

 and bountiful. She is peasant in the best sense, proud of her spotless cap and apron, free and independent in her carriage, with shoulders that know no cringing stoop and voice that cannot whine."

This good creature took me rambling through the woods, she picking the nuts, and I devouring them; and I found her talk ever sensible and entertaining. Thanks to the natural good manners and intelligence of the French people, there is far less difference than in England between the uneducated and educated classes. My friends of the mill honoured me once with an invitation to dinner. The sky was menacing, and, as I entered the long park avenue whence the mill was visible, I saw the miller and his son anxiously scanning the heavens and the green-roofed aisle of walnut and sycamore by which I came. They hailed me with vigorous welcome, and, as I rested in their beautifully clean kitchen, with broad and generous fireplace, where the wood crackled pleasantly, and shone upon polished brass dogs and gleaming bronze pots, with the high French bed in the deep recess, the miller's wife mixed me some cassis and water. A more excellent dinner I have never eaten than that cooked, without fuss, or haste, or delay, by the miller's wife. In a twinkling, as it seemed to me, she had savoury tomato-soup on the table; and while she laid the cloth, the