self at the house of Mother Lecacheur.

"She was an old, wrinkled and stern peasant woman, who seemed always to
receive customers under protest, with a kind of defiance.

"It was the month of May. The spreading apple trees covered the court
with a shower of blossoms which rained unceasingly both upon people and
upon the grass.

"I said: 'Well, Madame Lecacheur, have you a room for me?'

"Astonished to find that I knew her name, she answered:

"'That depends; everything is let, but all the same I can find out."

"In five minutes we had come to an agreement, and I deposited my bag upon
the earthen floor of a rustic room, furnished with a bed, two chairs, a
table and a washbowl. The room looked into the large, smoky kitchen,
where the lodgers took their meals with the people of the farm and the
landlady, who was a widow.

"I washed my hands, after which I went out. The old woman was making a
chicken fricassee for dinner in the large fireplace in which hung the
iron pot, black with smoke.

"'You have travellers, then, at the present time?' said I to her.

"She answered in an offended tone of voice:

"'I have a lady, an English lady, who has reached years of maturity. She
occupies the other room.'

"I obtained, by means of an extra five sous a day, the privilege of
dining alone out in the yard when the weather was fine.

"My place was set outside the door, and I was beginning to gnaw the lean
limbs of the Normandy chicken, to drink the clear cider and to munch the
hunk of white bread, which was four days old but excellent.

"Suddenly the wooden gate which gave on the highway was opened, and a
strange lady directed her steps toward the house. She was very thin, very
tall, so tightly enveloped in a red Scotch plaid shawl that one might
have supposed she had no arms, if one had not seen a long hand appear
just above the hips, holding a white tourist umbrella. Her face was like
that of a mummy, surrounded with curls of gray hair, which tossed about
at every step she took and made me think, I know not why, of a pickled
herring in curl papers. Lowering her eyes, she passed quickly in front of
me and entered the house.

"That singular apparition cheered me. She undoubtedly was my neighbor,
the English lady of mature age of whom our hostess had spoken.

"I did not see her again that day. The next day, when I had settled
myself to commence painting at the end of that beautiful valley which you
know and which extends