I put dear old Leà first because it might as well be said at once that without her loving care life at the Inn, with all its comforts, would be no life at all--none worth living. Louis, the running-water painter, known as the Man in High-Water Boots--one of the best beloved of our group--always insists that in the days gone by Leà occupied a pedestal at the main entrance of the twelfth-century church at the end of the street, and is out for a holiday. In proof he points out the empty pedestal set in a niche, and has even gone so far as to pencil her name on the rough stone. Mignon, however, he admits, is a saint of another kind--a dainty, modest, captivating little maid, who looks at you with her wondering blue eyes, and who is as shy as a frightened gazelle. There is a young fisherman named Gaston, a weather-tanned, frank, fearless fellow who knows all about these eyes. He brings the fish to the Inn--those he catches himself--and Mignon generally manages to help in their unpacking. It is not a part of her duty. Her special business is to make everybody happy; to crack the great white sugar-loaf into bits with a pair of pincers--no machine-made dominoes for Lemois--and to turn the coffee-roaster--an old-fashioned, sheet-iron drum swinging above a brazier of hot coals--and to cool its contents by tossing them in a pan--much as an Egyptian girl winnows wheat. It is a pity you never tasted her coffee, served in the garden--old Leà on the run with it boiling-hot to your table. You might better have stopped what you were doing and taken steamer for Havre and the Inn. You would never have regretted it. Nor would you even at this late hour regret any one of the dishes made by Pierre, the chef. And now I think of it, it is but fair to tell you that if you repent the delay and show a fit appreciation of his efforts, or come properly endorsed (I'll give you a letter), he may, perhaps, invite you into his kitchen which I have just vacated, a place of such various enticing smells from things baking, broiling, and frying; with unforgettable, appetizing whiffs of burnt sugar, garlic, fine herbs, and sherry, to say nothing of the flavors of bowls of mayonnaise, heaps of chopped onions, platters of cream--even a basket of eggs still warm from the nest--that the memory of it will linger with you for the rest of your days.