you can drink."

She took it, for she really enjoyed it, but she left half the glass.

Then Chicot, in an excess of generosity, said:

"Look here, as it is so much to your taste, I will give you a small keg
of it, just to show that you and I are still excellent friends." So she
took one away with her, feeling slightly overcome by the effects of what
she had drunk.

The next day the innkeeper drove into her yard and took a little
iron-hooped keg out of his gig. He insisted on her tasting the contents,
to make sure it was the same delicious article, and, when they had each
of them drunk three more glasses, he said as he was going away:

"Well, you know when it is all gone there is more left; don't be modest,
for I shall not mind. The sooner it is finished the better pleased I
shall be."

Four days later he came again. The old woman was outside her door
cutting up the bread for her soup.

He went up to her and put his face close to hers, so that he might smell
her breath; and when he smelt the alcohol he felt pleased.

"I suppose you will give me a glass of the Special?" he said. And they
had three glasses each.

Soon, however, it began to be whispered abroad that Mother Magloire was
in the habit of getting drunk all by herself. She was picked up in her
kitchen, then in her yard, then in the roads in the neighborhood, and
she was often brought home like a log.

The innkeeper did not go near her any more, and, when people spoke to
him about her, he used to say, putting on a distressed look:

"It is a great pity that she should have taken to drink at her age, but
when people get old there is no remedy. It will be the death of her in
the long run."

And it certainly was the death of her. She died the next winter. About
Christmas time she fell down, unconscious, in the snow, and was found
dead the next morning.

And when Chicot came in for the farm, he said:

"It was very stupid of her; if she had not taken to drink she would
probably have lived ten years longer."

BOITELLE

Father Boitelle (Antoine) made a specialty of undertaking dirty jobs all
through the countryside. Whenever there was a ditch or a cesspool to
be cleaned out, a dunghill removed, a sewer cleansed, or any dirt hole
whatever, he way always employed to do it.

He would come with the instruments of his trade, his sabots covered with
dirt, and set to work, complaining incessantly about his occupation.
When people asked him then why h