I remember in my girlhood, when I knew the Sandy River Valley country so well, that when a farmer wanted to buy more land he always tried, at no matter what sacrifice, to get a piece adjoining what he already owned, and put a fence around it.  It is different here.  People own a piece of land here, and a piece there, and another piece miles away, and there are no fences.

For example, around Pere Abelard’s house there is a fruit garden and a kitchen garden.  The rest of his land is all over the place.  He has a big piece of woodland at Pont aux Dames, where he was born, and another on the route de Mareuil.  He has a field on the route de Couilly, and another on the side of the hill on the route de Meaux, and he has a small patch of fruit trees and a potato field on the chemin Madame, and another big piece of grassland running down the hill from Huiry to Conde.

Almost nothing is fenced in.  Grain fields, potato patches, beet fields belonging to different people touch each other without any other barrier than the white stones, almost level with the soil, put in by the surveyors.

Of course they are always in litigation, but, as I told you, a lawsuit is a cachet of respectability in France.

As for separating a French man or woman from the land—­it is almost impossible.  The piece of woodland that Abelard owns at Pont aux Dames is called “Le Paradis.”  It is a part of his mother’s estate, and his sister, who lives across the Morin, owns the adjoining lot.  It is of no use to anyone.  They neither of them ever dream of cutting the wood.  Now and then, when we drive, we go and look at it, and Pere tells funny stories of the things he did there when he was a lad.  It is full of game, and not long ago he had an offer for it.  The sum was not big, but invested would have added five hundred francs a year to his income.  But no one could make either him or his sister resolve to part with it.  So there it lies idle, and the only thing it serves for is to add to the tax bill every year.  But they would rather own land than have money in the bank.  Land can’t run away.  They can go and look at it, press their feet on it, and realize that it is theirs.

I am afraid the next generation is going to be different, and the disturbing thing is that it is the women who are changing.  So many of them, who never left the country before, are working in the ammunition factories and earning unheard-of money, and spending it, which is a radical and alarming feature of the situation.

You spoke in one of your recent letters of the awful cost of this war in money.  But you must remember that the money is not lost.  It is only redistributed.  Whether or not the redistribution is a danger is something none of us can know yet; that is a thing only the future can show.  One thing is certain, it has forcibly liberated women.

You ask how the cats are.  They are remarkable.  Khaki gets more savage every day, and less like what I imagined a house cat ought to be.  He has thrashed every cat in the commune except Didine, and never got a scratch to show for it.  But he has never scratched me.  I slapped him the other day.  He slapped back,—­but with a velvet paw, never even showed a claw.