And no one but a thrifty French housewife could have contrived to get that wee round table and little chair into that tiny angle. Yet I felt very cosy and comfortable there, and the old grey-haired French mother, preparing supper for her household, and for any soldier who might be passing by, seemed perfectly satisfied with her cramped surroundings, and kept begging me graciously to remain where I was, drinking the hot tea she had just made for me, while my boots (that were always wet out there) dried under her big charcoal stove. And always she smiled away; and I smiled too. Who could help it? She and her kitchen were the most charming study imaginable. Every now and then her fine, old, brown, thin, wrinkled hand would reach over my head for a pot, or a brush, or a pan, from the wall behind, or the shelf above me, while the other hand would stir or shake something over the wee gas-ring or the charcoal stove. For so small was the kitchen that by stretching she could reach at the same time to the wall on either side. Then she began to pick over a pile of rough-looking green stuff, very much like that we in England should contemptuously call weeds. Pick, pick, pick! A diamond merchant with his jewels could not have been more careful, more delicate, more, watchful. And as I thought that, it suddenly came over me that to this old, careful, thrifty Frenchwoman those weedy greens were not weeds at all, but were really as precious as diamonds, for she was a Frenchwoman, clever and disciplined in the art of thrift, and they represented the most important thing in all the world to-day--food. Food means life. Food means victory. Food means the end of the War, and PEACE. You could read all that in her black, intelligent eyes. Then I began to sit up and watch her more closely still. When she had picked off all those little hard leaves, she cracked up the bare, harsh stalks into pieces an inch long, and flung them all, leaves and stalks, into a saucepan of boiling water, which she presently pushed aside to let simmer away gently for ten minutes or so. Meanwhile she is carefully peeling a hard-boiled egg, taking the shell off in two pieces, and shredding up the white on a little white saucer, never losing a crumb of it even. An egg! Why waste an egg like that? But indeed, she is not going to waste it. She is using the yolk to make mayonnaise sauce, and the white is for decoration later on. With all her thrift she must have things pretty. Her cheap dishes must have an air of finish, an artistic touch; and she knows, and acts up to the fact, that the yellow and white egg is not wasted, but returns a hundred per cent., because it is going to make her supper look a hundred times more important than it really is. Now she takes the greens from the saucepan, drains them, and puts them into a little frying-pan on the big stove; and she peppers and salts them, and turns them about, and leaves them with a little smile.