I explained that I had several, and that she would see all the other little girls with the same cloaks; but I got only the same answer, adding that Madame would see—­no child would wear such a cloak.  I was much disgusted—­thought the woman was capricious; but she was perfectly right; not a single mother, and Heaven knows they were poor enough, would take a red cloak, and they all had to be transformed into red flannel petticoats.  Every woman made me the same answer:  “Every one on the road would laugh at them.”

I was not much luckier with the ulsters.  What I had ordered for big girls of nine and ten would just go on girls of six and seven.  Either French children are much stouter than English, or they wear thicker things underneath.  Here again there was work to do—­all the sleeves were much too long; my maids had to alter and shorten them, which they did with rather a bad grace.

A most interesting operation that very cold year was taking ice out of the big pond at the foot of the hill.  The ice was several inches thick, and beautifully clear in the middle of the pond; toward the edges the reeds and long grass had all got frozen into it, and it was rather difficult to get the big blocks out.  We had one of the farm carts with a pair of strong horses, and three or four men with axes and a long pointed stick.  It was so solid that we all stood on the pond while the men were cutting their first square hole in the middle.  It was funny to see the fish swimming about under the ice.

The whole village of course looked on, and the children were much excited, and wanted to come and slide on the ice, but I got nervous as the hole got bigger and the ice at the edges thinner, so we all adjourned to the road and watched operations from there.

There were plenty of fish in the pond, and once a year it was thoroughly drained and cleaned—­the water drawn off, and the bottom of the pond, which got choked up with mud and weeds, cleared out.  They made a fine haul of fish on those occasions from the small pools that were left on each side while the cleaning was going on.

Our ice-house was a godsend to all the countryside.  Whenever any one was ill, and ice was wanted, they always came to the chateau.  Our good old doctor was not at all in the movement as regarded fresh air and cold water, but ice he often wanted.  He was a rough, kindly old man, quite the type of the country practitioner—­a type that is also disappearing, like everything else.  Everybody knew his cabriolet (with a box at the back where he kept his medicine chest and instruments), with a strong brown horse that trotted all day and all night up and down the steep hills in all weathers.  A very small boy was always with him to hold the horse while he made his visits.

Our doctor was very kind to the poor, and never refused to go out at night.  It was funny to see him arrive on a cold day, enveloped in so many cloaks and woollen comforters that it took him some time to get out of his wraps.  He had a gruff voice, and heavy black overhanging eyebrows which frightened people at first, but they soon found out what a kind heart there was beneath such a rough exterior, and the children loved him.  He had always a box of liquorice lozenges in his waistcoat pocket which he distributed freely to the small ones.