Ah! Now there'll be peelings, and those she'll have to throw away.
Not a bit of it!
There are only the very thinnest, filmiest scrapings of dark down off this old dear's potatoes. And suddenly I think of poor dear England, where our potato skins are so thick that a tradition has grown from them, and the maids throw them over their shoulders and see what letter they make on the floor, and that will be the first letter of his name! Laughing, I tell of this tradition to my old Frenchwoman.
And what do you think she answers?
"The skin must be very thick not to break," she says solemnly. "But then you English are all so rich!"
Are we?
Or are we simply—what?
Is it that, bluntly put, we are lazy?
After the fall of Antwerp, when a million people had fled into Holland, I saw ladies in furs and jewels holding up beseeching, imploring hands to the kindly but bewildered Dutch folk asking for bread—just bread! It was a terrible sight! But shall we, too, be begging for bread some day? Shall we, too, be longing for the pieces we threw away? Who knows?
Finally we sat down to an exquisite supper.