New Year's Day.

[5] The Earl of Derby's fine palace near Liverpool.

We started off one morning after breakfast to interview the
school-mistress and the Mayor--a most important personage. If you had
ever seen St. Quentin you would hardly believe it could possess such
an exalted functionary. The village consists of about twelve little,
low gray houses, stretching up a steep hill, with a very rough road
toward the woods of Borny behind. There are forty inhabitants, a
church, and a school-house; but it _is_ a "commune," and not the
smallest in France (there is another still smaller somewhere in the
South, toward the Alpes Maritimes). I always go and make a visit to
the Mayor, who is a very small farmer and keeps the drinking shop[6]
of the village. We shake hands and I sit a few minutes in a wooden
chair in the one room (I don't take a drink, which is so much gained),
and we talk about the wants and general behaviour of the population.
The first time I went I was on horseback, so we dismounted and had our
little talk. When we got up to go he hurriedly brought out a bench for
me to mount from, and was quite bewildered when he saw W. lift me to
the saddle from the ground.

[6] Cabaret.

The church is a pretty, old gray building--standing very high, with
the little graveyard on one side, and a grass terrace in front, from
which one has the most lovely view down the valley, and over the
green slopes to the woods--Borny and Villers-Cotterets on one side,
Chezy the other. It is very worn and dilapidated inside, and is never
open except on the day of St. Quentin,[7] when the cure of La
Ferte-Milon comes over and has a service. The school-house is a nice
modern little house, built by W. some years ago. It looks as if it had
dropped down by mistake into this very old world little hamlet.

[7] In August, I think.

It is a short walk, little more than two kilometres from the gates of
the big park, and the day was enchanting--cold and bright; too bright,
indeed, for the low, gray clouds of the last days had been promising
snow and I wanted it so much for my tree! We were quite a
party--Henrietta, Anne, Pauline, Alice and Francis, Bonny the
fox-terrier, and a very large and heavy four-wheeled cart, which the
children insisted upon taking and which naturally had to be drawn up all
the hills by the grown-ups, as it was much too heavy for the little
ones. Bonny enjoyed himself madly, making frantic excursions to the
woods i