Nor can I boast, as a cook, of a record of unvarying success. On more than one occasion I must admit to having scorched the cocoa, and once, not many days ago—to my shame be it said!—I ruined a ten gallon can by putting in salt instead of sugar! Here at Conflans we have an unusual amount of competition in the light lunch line. The other day a French fried potato booth, like a hot-dog booth at a country fair at home, established itself on the terrace just outside our door. Now a hungry doughboy can take the edge off his appetite with a paper full of hot French fries in return for a franc at any hour of the day. Also in the street below the terrace are many little stands where oranges and sandwiches made of rolls and slices of sausage are on sale. The rivalry between these stands, it appears, is acute. Yesterday, hearing a hubbub, I looked out to see a comic battle in progress, the proprietors of two neighboring stands, a fat frowsy old woman and a little ragged man like a weasel, pelting each other for all they were worth with rotten oranges while half the A. E. F., it seemed, stood around and cheered. Nor did matters settle down to calm until a gendarme and intervention appeared on the scene. This morning I stopped in at the little French store around the corner to buy half a dozen eggs to make a custard sauce for my chocolate bread pudding. When the man gave me my change I noticed he had overcharged me by twenty-five centimes. “Why’s that?” I asked. “That,” returned the shopkeeper, “is because you picked them out by hand.” Some canteen ladies can cook and wait on the counter and open milk-cans and wash the chocolate cups and yet keep spotlessly and specklessly clean. But I have come to the conclusion that as long as I live in Conflans, with its air full of smoke and soot from the train yards, and its water so hard that it curdles the soap,—and sometimes the milk in the cocoa too, that I will have to content myself with being godly and leave the cleanliness till a happier day. We have been having a regular plague of inspectors and investigators of late. Last night just as I had my final bout with the last chocolate container, a major and a lieutenant colonel wandered in, evidently in search of scandal. The lieutenant colonel fixed a piercing eye on me. “So you are the only ‘white woman’ in this part of the world at present?” “Well,” I said looking at my fingers smudged with cocoa, “tonight I should say that I was a pale chocolate-colored woman.” “I noticed that your face was dirty,” coolly returned the gentleman. I hurriedly excused myself in order to consult a looking-glass. Sure enough, there on my nose was a large smudge of soot! I must have got it the last time I stoked the chocolate-stove. Conflans, April 7.