hotels towels were microscopic and few in number), and a package of tea, which was almost an unknown commodity in those days.  None of our visitors ever took any, and always excused themselves with the same phrase, “Merci, je vais bien,” evidently looking upon it as some strange and hurtful medicine.  That has all changed, like everything else.  Now one finds tea not only at all the chateaux, with brioches and toast, but even in all the hotels, but I wouldn’t guarantee what we get there as ever having seen China or Ceylon, and it is still wiser to take chocolate or coffee, which is almost always good.  We had a lovely drive back.  The forest was beautiful in the waning light.  As usual, we didn’t meet any vehicle of any kind, and were quite excited when we saw a carriage approaching in the distance—­however, it proved to be W. in his dog-cart.  We passed through one or two little villages quite lost in the forest—­always the same thing, one long, straggling street, with nobody in it, a large farm at one end and very often the church at the other.  As it was late, the farm gates were all open, the cattle inside, teams of white oxen drinking out of a large trough.

In a large farm near Boursonne there was much animation and conversation.  All the beasts were in, oxen, cows, horses, chickens, and in one corner, a flock of geese.  The poor little “goose girl,” a child about ten years old with bright-blue eyes and a pig-tail like straw hanging down her back, was being scolded violently by the farmer’s wife, who was presiding in person over the rentree of the animals, for having brought her geese home on a run.  They wouldn’t eat, and would certainly all be ill, and probably die before morning.  There is a pretty little old chateau at Boursonne; the park, however, so shut in by high walls that one sees nothing in passing.  W. had shot there once or twice in former years, but it has changed hands very often.

[Illustration:  Long pauses when nobody seemed to have anything to say.]

Sometimes we paid more humble visits, not to chateaux, but to the principal people of the little country town near, from which we had all our provisions.  We went to see the doctor’s wife, the notary’s wife, the mayor’s wife, and the two schools—­the asile or infant school, and the more important school for bigger girls.  The old doctor was quite a character, had been for years in the country, knew everybody and everybody’s private history.  He was the doctor of the chateau, by the year, attended to everybody, masters and servants, and received a regular salary, like a secretary.  He didn’t come very often for us in his medical capacity, but he often dropped in at the end of the day to have a talk with W. The first time I saw him W. presented him to me, as un bon ami de la famille.  I naturally put out my hand, which so astonished and disconcerted him (he barely touched the tips of my fingers) that I was rather bewildered.  W. explained after he