She always has that little smile for everything, and I think that goes into the flavour somehow! And now she pours the water the greens were boiled in, into that big soup-pot on the big stove, and gives the soup a friendly stir just to shew that she hasn't forgotten it. She opens the cupboard, and brings out every little or big bit of bread left over from lunch and breakfast, and she shapes them a little with her sharp old knife, and she hurries them all into the big pot, putting the lid down quickly so that even the steam doesn't get out and get wasted! Now she takes the greens off the fire, and puts them into a dear little round white china dish, and leaves them to get cold. She opens her cupboard again and brings out a piece of cold veal cutlet and a piece of cold steak left over from luncheon yesterday, and to-day also. What is she going to do with these? She is going to make them our special dish for supper. She begins to shred them up with her old sharp blade--shreds them up finely, not mincing, not chopping, but shredding the particles apart--and into them she shreds a little cold ham and onion, and then she flavours it well with salt and pepper. Then she piles this all on a dish and covers it with golden mayonnaise, and criss-crosses it with long red wires of beetroot. The greens are cold now, and she dresses them. She oils them, and vinegars them, and pats and arranges them, and decorates them with the white of the chopped egg and thin little slices of tomato. "Voilà! The salad!" she says, with her flash of a smile. Salad for five people--a beautiful, tasty, green, melting, delicious salad that might have been made of young asparagus tips! And what did it cost? One farthing, plus the labour and care and affection and time that the old woman put into the making of it--plus, in other words, her thrift! Now she must empty my tea-pot. Does she turn it upside down over a bucket of rubbish as they do in England, leaving the tea-leaves to go to the dustman when he calls on Friday? She would think that an absolutely wicked thing to do if she had ever heard of such proceedings, but she has not. She drains every drop of tea into a jug, puts a lid on it, and places it away in her safe; then she empties the tea-leaves into a yellow earthenware basin, and puts a plate over them, and puts them up on a shelf. I begin to say to myself, with quite an excited feeling, "Shall I ever see her throw anything away?" Potatoes next. Ah! Now there'll be peelings, and those she'll have to throw away. Not a bit of it! There are only the very thinnest, filmiest scrapings of dark down off this old dear's potatoes. And suddenly I think of poor dear England, where our potato skins are so thick that a tradition has grown from them, and the maids throw them over their shoulders and see what letter they make on the floor, and that will be the first letter of _his_ name! Laughing, I tell of this tradition to my old Frenchwoman.