ought, "_un double, s'il vous plait_." "Where
are you working?" asks one in pure white linen from top to toe. "At the
Garrefour de l'Epine," returns the other in corduroy (they are all
gaitered, by the way). "I couldn't do a thing to it. I ran out of white.
Where were you?" "I wasn't working. I was looking for motives." Here is
an outbreak of jubilation, and a lot of men clustering together about
some new-comer with outstretched hands; perhaps the "correspondence" has
come in and brought So-and-so from Paris, or perhaps it is only
So-and-so who has walked over from Chailly to dinner.

"_A table, Messieurs!_" cries M. Siron, bearing through the court the
first tureen of soup. And immediately the company begins to settle down
about the long tables in the dining-room, framed all round with sketches
of all degrees of merit and demerit. There's the big picture of the
huntsman winding a horn with a dead boar between his legs, and his
legs--well, his legs in stockings. And here is the little picture of a
raw mutton-chop, in which Such-a-one knocked a hole last summer with no
worse a missile than a plum from the dessert. And under all these works
of art so much eating goes forward, so much drinking, so much jabbering
in French and English, that it would do your heart good merely to peep
and listen at the door. One man is telling how they all went last year
to the fete at Fleury, and another how well So-and-so would sing of an
evening; and here are a third and fourth making plans for the whole
future of their lives; and there is a fifth imitating a conjuror making
faces on his clenched fist, surely of all arts the most difficult and
admirable! A sixth has eaten his fill, lights a cigarette, and resigns
himself to digestion. A seventh has just dropped in, and calls for
soup. Number eight, meanwhile, has left the table, and is once more
trampling the poor piano under powerful and uncertain fingers.

Dinner over, people drop outside to smoke and chat. Perhaps we go along
to visit our friends at the other end of the village, where there is
always a good welcome and a good talk, and perhaps some pickled oysters
and white wine to close the evening. Or a dance is organised in the
dining-room, and the piano exhibits all its paces under manful
jockeying, to the light of three or four candles and a lamp or two,
while the waltzers move to and fro upon the wooden floor, and sober men,
who are not given to such light pleasures, get up on the