e that bag of pears. I'd like to. They'd be a godsend to the mess.
But I can't."

Madame saw the impossibility in the end; but she stuffed as many
pears as she could into his pocket, and he went off bulging
unbecomingly.

M. used to complain that he ate too much when he came to stay with
me. I confess that our midday meal--we ate it at noon, conforming to
the custom of the house--was heavy. And Madame was old-fashioned in
her idea of the behaviour proper to a hostess. She insisted on our
eating whether we wanted to eat or not, and was vexed if we refused
second and even third helpings.

Madame was immensely interested in food and we talked about marketing
and cookery every day. I came, towards the end of my stay, to have a
fair knowledge of kitchen French. I could have attended cookery
lectures with profit. I could even have taught a French servant how
to stew a rabbit in such a way that it appeared at table brown, with
thick brown sauce and a flavour of red wine. The marketing for the
family was done by Madame and Marie, Marie in a high, stiff, white
head-dress, carrying a large basket.

On the subject of prices Madame was intensely curious. She wanted to
know exactly what everything cost in England and Ireland. I used to
write home for information, and then we did long and confusing sums,
translating stones or pounds into kilos and shillings into francs;
Monsieur intervening occasionally with information about the rate of
exchange at the moment. Madame insisted on taking this into account
in comparing the cost of living in the two countries. Then we used to
be faced with problems which I regard as insoluble.

Perhaps a sum of this kind might be set in an arithmetic paper for
advanced students. "Butter is 2_s._ 1_d._ a pound. A kilo is rather
more than two pounds. The rate of exchange is 27.85. What would that
butter cost in France?"

We had an exciting time when the municipal authorities of the town in
which we lived introduced fixed prices. Madame, who is an entirely
sensible woman, was frankly sceptical from the start about the
possibility of regulating prices. Gendarmes paraded the market-place,
where on certain days the countrywomen sat in rows, their vegetables,
fowl, eggs, and butter exposed for sale. They declined, of course, to
accept the fixed prices. Madame and her friends, though they hated
being overcharged, recognised the strength of the countrywomen's
position. There was a combination between the