and a little lemon juice or vinegar, for fish,
wild-fowl, and other sundries. To get what
English cooks call melted butter, ask for
white sauce made with water, instead of milk
or cream.]

After these preliminaries, and the occupations
of the day, dinner came to tranquillise
the human heart with its benign influence.
We had arrived at that point of serene
resignation, when, if nothing more is to follow, it
does not much matter; but if there comes a
final tit-bit, it is condescendingly favoured
with a patronising glance.

Enter Madame, smiling charmingly; but I
knew the meaning of that wicked twinkle
about the eyes. "Voilà, the dish of little
dickey-birds."

"These larks are really very nice," said
Margaret, finishing her portion. "Only there
is nothing but legs. You have saved the
breasts for some other purpose? and the flesh
is white, while our larks at home—"

I was obliged to grin a very broad grin.
Madame averted her head to hide the
increasing glitter from her eyes. Margaret
turned very red, while a sudden idea struck
her. "I am sure you have been conspiring
together to make me eat frogs!" said she in
a tone of decision, but without having quite
decided whether to laugh or to cry in
consequence.

"Make haste, Madame," said I, "with a
bottle of your best Champagne to drink
success to our new acquaintances the frogs.
But why did we not have the mullet today?"

"It is guarded for tomorrow. Monsieur
wishes to make economies, and not to live
extravagantly."

Next morning was employed in settling
ourselves more comfortably, in wondering
whether the little chests of drawers in the
rooms would hold the contents of our large
portmanteaus, in speculating on the quality
of an English ham which had been pushed as
a makeweight into my own private box of
papers, and in arranging a little jaunt into
the country, Madame being offered a seat in
the carriole. Dinner-time returned with ever-
pleasing punctuality, and I had a tremendous
appetite to welcome the mullet. Madame's
shrimp sauce, which smothered the fish, was
as successful as the first dashing effort of
genius on a new stage and before an
unaccustomed public. Does the reader know that
some fish have bones, and others cartilages
only? though French fish have bones (as
well as mouths) which are distinguished by a
different title from the same parts in human
kind. Well; in helping myself to grey
mullet for the fourth or fifth time, I came to
a very queer-looking cartilage. "The
abominable treachery! I am eating—"

"A dog-fish!" shouted Margaret and
Madame Dubois in a breath. "And pray
how do you like it, sir? Is it not almost as
nice as the frogs?"

"Oh, I don't know," making a rush into
strong-stomached stoicism. "With shrimp-
sauce like this, I should not mind eating the
sea-serpent, from the end of his nose to the
tip of his tail. But, Madame, if I don't pay
you off for this—"

"Monsieur must not fash himself; that will
be bad for his digestion. He gave me a glass
of good Champagne yesterday, so I will now
give him one in return."

A country drive in pleasant weather calms
many a little touch of domestic irritation.
We jumped into our carriole, mounted a long
ascent of road, got a glance of the distant
sea, looked over the tree-tops of the rustling
forest, and peeped into the valley below,
admiring its pretty church spire, its quiet
stream, and its neglected château, with
clipped avenues and right-angled fish-ponds,
just outside the village, where the road turns
off by the Crucifix, at that corner where the
field of late-sown flax is shining like a carpet
of green silk velvet. We must leave the
carriole and walk a little way to inspect the
fish-ponds; for in them is a colony of frogs of
the kind we tasted yesterday—not the dull
sluggards that we see in the ditches at home,
but lively fellows, thoroughly Frenchified,
with a bright green ribbon (the cordon of
their order) running down the middle of
their back. Away they jump, more elastic
than grasshoppers, as our footsteps approach
the margin of their pond.

"Are those my yesterday's larks?" asked
Margaret, in a tone of agreeable surprise;
and then she coaxingly and artfully continued,
"You must be tired, dear Madame Dubois;
take some refreshment. We have brought a
few sandwiches, which I prepared myself."

"San-veeches! I have never tasted that
English dish. Ma foi! it is very, very good."

"And the ham?" inquired Margaret,
"Do you like our ham?"

"Your ham?" stammered Madame. "Your
English ham, which has never been cooked?
Oh! I see how it is. And I deserve it. To
be made to eat raw ham is a fitting penance
for my manifold crimes. I have deceived my
husband shamefully; he loathes the name of
goat's milk, and I have made him drink it as
the genuine produce of the cow. Hare he
detests; and, for the mere fun of the thing, I
have fed him with beef-cheese, made solely
with hare. My poor bourgeois, thou art
revenged. Raw ham!—Me!"

She would have gone on thus till night-fall,
but her despair was so ludicrous, that her
very self was compelled to be amused by it.
Our smothered mirth burst into a simultaneous
shout.

"Well now, Madame," said I, "as these
wise tricks have gone the round of our party,
pray let us agree to a truce for some time to
come. Because, if no other ill consequence
follows, we shall all certainly die of laughing."

"Bah!" said Madame Dubois, "we shall
die of something one of these days, and
we may as well laugh as long as we can.