But, hush! there is a hymn sounding yonder in the refectory; a hymn sung by voices, many of which are yet fresh and clear, though the singers number more than eighty years of life, and of life that has often been hard and full of heaviness. It is the grace before meat, and the hot joints, with the fresh vegetables from their own garden, have just come up from the big kitchen by means of a lift to the serving-room. There are no servants to wait at table, and the family dinner-party is a private one, inasmuch as it is the custom here for the most active of the inmates to agree among themselves who shall be butler, or beaufetière, for each day during the week. So the dinner-time goes pleasantly and quickly, the meat, the vegetables, and the capital household beer, of which each man has a pint twice a day, and each woman half a pint, being the only articles that require serving. The good old-fashioned family custom of everybody having his or her own teapot is observed here. A great gas-boiler stands on one side the refectory, and a row of convenient lockers on the other; and each inmate has {30} tea and coffee from the stores, while bread and butter are also served out for consumption according to each individual fancy, and not in rations at each meal time. Thus those old ladies and gentlemen who have spending money, or friends to bring them some of the little luxuries that they so keenly appreciate, can add a relish to their breakfast or to the evening beer. We will not go in while they are at dinner, for there are those here yet who "might have been gentlefolk" but for the mutability of mortal affairs. Stay! here come the old ladies, with old-fashioned curtseys, which are more than half a bow, and not a mere vulgar "bob." There is no mistaking some of their faces. You may see their like in French pictures, or in old French towns still. Some of them with eyes from which the fire had not yet died out; with deftly-moving fingers; with a quick, springy step; with an inherited remnant of the French moue and shrug, as they answer a gentle jest about their age and comeliness. "Eighty-four; and I don't know how it is, but I don't seem to see so well in the dark as I used. When I went out to see my brother-in-law, I was quite glad he came part of the way home with me." "Turned eighty, but I can't get upstairs as I used to do." "You speak French, madame?"