coveting for a long while, and had tried in vain to buy a score of times,
but she had always obstinately refused to part with it.

"I was born here, and here I mean to die," was all she said.

He found her peeling potatoes outside the farmhouse door. She was a woman
of about seventy-two, very thin, shriveled and wrinkled, almost dried up
in fact and much bent but as active and untiring as a girl. Chicot patted
her on the back in a friendly fashion and then sat down by her on a
stool.

"Well mother, you are always pretty well and hearty, I am glad to see."

"Nothing to complain of, considering, thank you. And how are you,
Monsieur Chicot?"

"Oh, pretty well, thank you, except a few rheumatic pains occasionally;
otherwise I have nothing to complain of."

"So much the better."

And she said no more, while Chicot watched her going on with her work.
Her crooked, knotted fingers, hard as a lobster's claws, seized the
tubers, which were lying in a pail, as if they had been a pair of
pincers, and she peeled them rapidly, cutting off long strips of skin
with an old knife which she held in the other hand, throwing the potatoes
into the water as they were done. Three daring fowls jumped one after the
other into her lap, seized a bit of peel and then ran away as fast as
their legs would carry them with it in their beak.