Economy must also be rigidly maintained in the purchase of food, and this is generally accomplished by discreet buying in the markets. A servant or a member of the household makes daily purchases in this manner, and the middleman's profits on the chief part of the food required are successfully avoided. In Paris the maid-of-all-work, who is generally the only servant employed in a modest flat, makes these daily purchases, out of which she obtains from those with whom she deals a commission of a _sou_ in every _franc_ expended. This is a universally recognised custom, but in addition there is a prevalent but altogether reprehensible practice, known as _faire danser l'anse du panier_. It is pure dishonesty, for the _bonne_ puts down in the books a small overcharge on each item, and this with the market-man's _sou du franc_ amounts to a considerable sum in the course of a year, often nearly equal to her wage. It is an interesting fact that Breton servants are generally quite guiltless of the overcharge system, for the people of Brittany are of much the same stock as the Welsh, concerning whom there is a proverb for which the writer fails to find justification. _Dejeuner_ at 11.30 or 12 and dinner at 6.30 or 7 are the two essential meals of the day. Breakfast, served in the bedroom, consists of coffee or chocolate and small crisply baked rolls with butter and perhaps honey, while the Anglo-Saxon meal called tea is only an established feature among the upper classes, where English customs are extremely fashionable. The two chief meals both consist of at least four courses, with a cup of coffee added to give a finish to the whole. It might be thought absurd for those who are poor or living with great economy to begin their meals with an _hors-d'oeuvre_, but Miss Betham-Edwards, whose knowledge of the French is sufficiently wide to be an authority, asserts that a careful housekeeper will give this preliminary course as an economy, for being great bread-eaters a little scrap of ham or sausage or herring eaten with several mouthfuls of bread will take the edge off the appetite and enable her to be less lavish with the other courses. Soup is very frequently made out of the water in which vegetables have been stewed with a suspicion of flavouring added, and the meat courses are provided not from large joints, but from little scraps of meat which the French butcher produces in astonishing quantities from the same animal as his English neighbour handles in an entirely different and very much less economical fashion. These methods of cutting with a view to quantity rather than quality give much of the meat an unhappy toughness as though it were cut across or against the grain. Even the _bonne-a-tout-faire_ will prefer to make a sacrifice in the quantity of food in each course of a meal if by so doing she can be quite sure of finishing with a cup of coffee.