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 joining room, when he had come up and was splashing happily, 'to take a house here?—if you're fed up with this place.' Dick was often unaware of one's moods, but he never forgot an expressed feeling.

'Oh—it's not the Ecu d'Or I mind,' said Jill, getting out her little black crêpe-de-Chine dress. It was a delightful garment and had served her well for a year. One turn and it was over your head, and one tie and it was adjusted. She slipped on her pearls, for Dick liked to see her in them. 'It's France itself, sometimes, you know. We are such strangers here; and if we lived here for a hundred years we'd be strangers just the same. I suppose the place is still full of starving cats.'

'Let us hope that most of them have died during the winter,' said Dick cheerfully. 'People are much nearer the bare bones of existence here than with us. They're starved themselves, as I think I've said before.'

'Monsieur Michon isn't starved; or Madame either. It's a country of fat men and thin animals,' said Jill bitterly.

'The Michons aren't peuple. You don't see many fat peasants. I like it, you know. I like the bare bones; the sense of having got away from smugness and civilization. A place like this is still essentially mediæval.'

'Yes; and I suppose they left their dust lying in heaps along the road in the Middle Ages, too.'

'Worse than their dust.'

'Well, nothing could be worse than that headless corpse of a dog we found on the river-path. It had