are as white as though they were quite new. With her back turned
to the pump in the rear, Madame Lecoeur was kneading her butter in a
kind of oak box. She took some of different sorts which lay beside her,
and mixed the varieties together, correcting one by another, just as is
done in the blending of wines. Bent almost double, and showing sharp,
bony shoulders, and arms bared to the elbows, as scraggy and knotted as
pea-rods, she dug her fists into the greasy paste in front of her, which
was assuming a whitish and chalky appearance. It was trying work, and
she heaved a sigh at each fresh effort.

"Mademoiselle Saget wants to speak to you, aunt," said La Sarriette.

Madame Lecoeur stopped her work, and pulled her cap over her hair with
her greasy fingers, seemingly quite careless of staining it. "I've
nearly finished. Ask her to wait a moment," she said.

"She's got something very particular to tell you," continued La
Sarriette.

"I won't be more than a minute, my dear."

Then she again plunged her arms into the butter, which buried them up
to the elbows. Previously softened in warm water, it covered Madame
Lecoeur's parchment-like skin as with an oily film, and threw the big
purple veins that streaked her flesh into strong relief. La Sarriette
was quite disgusted by the sight of those hideous arms working so
frantically amidst the melting mass. However, she could recall the time
when her own pretty little hands had manipulated the butter for whole
afternoons at a time. It had even been a sort of almond-paste to her,
a cosmetic which had kept her skin white and her nails delicately pink;
and even now her slender fingers retained the suppleness it had endowed
them with.

"I don't think that butter of yours will be very good, aunt," she
continued, after a pause. "Some of the sorts seem much too strong."

"I'm quite aware of that," replied Madame Lecoeur, between a couple of
groans. "But what can I do? I must use everything up. There are some
folks who insist upon having butter cheap, and so cheap butter must be
made for them. Oh! it's always quite good enough for those who buy it."

La Sarriette reflected that she would hardly care to eat butter which
had been worked by her aunt's arms. Then she glanced at a little jar
full of a sort of reddish dye. "Your colouring is too pale," she said.

This colouring-matter--"raucourt," as the Parisians call it is used to
give the butter a fine yellow tint. The butter women im