She opens her cupboard again and brings out a piece of cold veal cutlet and a piece of cold steak left over from luncheon yesterday, and to-day also. What is she going to do with these? She is going to make them our special dish for supper. She begins to shred them up with her old sharp blade—shreds them up finely, not mincing, not chopping, but shredding the particles apart—and into them she shreds a little cold ham and onion, and then she flavours it well with salt and pepper. Then she piles this all on a dish and covers it with golden mayonnaise, and criss-crosses it with long red wires of beetroot.
The greens are cold now, and she dresses them. She oils them, and vinegars them, and pats and arranges them, and decorates them with the white of the chopped egg and thin little slices of tomato.
"Voilà! The salad!" she says, with her flash of a smile.
Salad for five people—a beautiful, tasty, green, melting, delicious salad that might have been made of young asparagus tips! And what did it cost? One farthing, plus the labour and care and affection and time that the old woman put into the making of it—plus, in other words, her thrift!
Now she must empty my tea-pot.
Does she turn it upside down over a bucket of rubbish as they do in England, leaving the tea-leaves to go to the dustman when he calls on Friday?
She would think that an absolutely wicked thing to do if she had ever heard of such proceedings, but she has not.
She drains every drop of tea into a jug, puts a lid on it, and places it away in her safe; then she empties the tea-leaves into a yellow earthenware basin, and puts a plate over them, and puts them up on a shelf.
I begin to say to myself, with quite an excited feeling, "Shall I ever see her throw anything away?"
Potatoes next.