es his duty simply and cheerfully;
looks after the sick, nurses them when there is a long illness or an
accident, teaches the women how to keep their houses clean and how to
cook good plain food. He is a farmer's son and extraordinarily
practical. He came to us one day to ask if we had a spare washing tub we
could give him. He was going to show a woman who sewed and embroidered
beautifully and who was very poor and unpractical, how to do her
washing. I think the people have a sort of respect for him, but they
don't come to church. Everybody appeals to him. We couldn't do anything
one day with a big kite some one had given the children. No one could in
the house, neither gardener, chauffeur, nor footmen, so we sent for him,
and it was funny to see him shortening the tail of the kite and racing
over the lawn in his black soutane. However, he made it work.

He was rather embarrassed this evening, as he had refused something I
had asked him to do and was afraid I wouldn't understand. We were
passing along the canal the other day when the "eclusier" came out of
his house and asked me if I would come and look at his child who was
frightfully ill--his wife in despair. Without thinking of my little ones
at home, I went into the house, where I found, in a dirty, smelly room,
a slatternly woman holding in her arms a child, about two years old,
who, I thought, was dead--such a ghastly colour--eyes turned up;
however, the poor little thing moaned and moved and the woman was shaken
with sobs--the father and two older children standing there, not knowing
what to do. They told me the doctor had come in the early morning and
said there was nothing to do. I asked if they had not sent for the cure.
"No, they hadn't thought of it." I said I would tell him as I passed the
presbytere on my way home. He wasn't there, but I left word that the
child was dying--could he go?

The child died about an hour after I had left the house. I sent a black
skirt to the woman and was then obliged to go to Paris for two or three
days. When I came back I asked my gardener, who is from this part of the
country and knows everybody, if the child's funeral had been quite
right. He told me it was awful--there was no service--the cure would not
bury him as he had never been baptized. The body had been put into a
plain wooden box and carried to the cemetery by the father and a friend.

I was very much upset, but, of course, the thing was over and there was
nothin