"A bit piney-like, aren't you? I seed from the first that you was piney-like," she said, standing tray in hand on the threshold of the little parlour, her fresh, highly-coloured face smiling kindly upon the pale girl. "I always do say that I pities ladies when they has anything on their minds; sitting about, same as you do now, with nothing to take them off theirselves. A body like me that has to keep a house clean, and cook and wash, and mind the children, to say naught of the sewing and the mending, and looking after the cows and the hens, and all the extra fusses and worries that come along, she hasn't got no time to remember herself, and when she gets to bed she's too tired to think. Now if you was to have some work--" Claire's face brightened with a sudden inspiration. "Will you give me some work? Let me help _you_! Do, please, Mrs Corby; I'd be so grateful. Let me come into the kitchen and do something now. I feel so lonely shut off here, all by myself." Mrs Corby laughed, her fat comfortable laugh. "Bless your 'art, you can come along and welcome. I'll be proud to have you. It ain't much you know of housework, I expect, but it'll do you no harm to learn. I'll find you some little jobs." "Oh, I'm not so useless as you think. I can brush and dust, and polish, and wash up, and I know a good deal about cooking. I'll make a salad to eat with the cold meat--a real French salad. I'm sure Mr Corby would enjoy a French salad," cried Claire, glancing out of the window at the well-stocked kitchen garden, and thinking of the wet lettuce and uncut onions, which were the good woman's idea of the dish in question. "May I make one to-day?" Mrs Corby smiled with a fine resignation. Personally she wanted none of them nasty messy foods, but there! the poor thing meant well, and if it would make her happy, let her have her way. So Claire collected her materials, and washed and mixed, and filled a great bowl, and decorated the top with slices of hardboiled eggs, and a few bright nasturtium blossoms, while three linty-locked children stood by, watching with fascinated attention. At dinner Claire thoroughly enjoyed her share of her own salad, but the verdict of the country-people was far from enthusiastic. "I don't go for to deny that it tasted well enough," Mrs Corby said with magnanimous candour, "but what I argue is, what's the sense of using up all them extras--eggs, and oil, and what not--when you can manage just as well without? I've never seen the day when I couldn't relish a bit o' plain lettuce and a plate of good spring onions!" "But the eggs and the dressing make it more nourishing," Claire maintained. "In France the peasants have very often nothing but salad for their dinner--great dishes of salad, with plenty of eggs."