factory he was for ever speaking of. Milk and money, milk and money—that was all this country ever cared about. . . And the old house did remind one so of Home!
Ah-h-ha! What was this—this delicious, this reviving whiff of some perfume truly familiar? Coffee! Yes, coffee—in berries—being roasted. But who, then, actually roasted coffee still, in these lax days? Ah, Métrailleur, to be sure—Métrailleur fils, who kept the grocery store past which the old man’s feet were just now languidly bearing him: Joseph Métrailleur, who called himself nowadays Meat-railer, if you please! in deference, forsooth, to the British tongues of his customers. Yes, Joseph was roasting coffee beans—and when he had roasted them and ground them up, and tempered the flavour a little—oh, judiciously, without doubt, for Joseph was a worthy man—he would put the mixture into some tin whose lid was loose, or lost, perhaps; and in the course of the next six or seven months would sell it, doing it up in paper bags, to people who would make it as they did tea and then offer it one to drink. Did not he, Philippe, know? Sore had been his longing for some coffee during his tedious convalescence; and once, in response to his repeated requests and as a great treat for the poor old foreigner, Mrs. Brown, the well-meaning, the incapable, had served him, with noisy anticipations, a muddy tisane which it would have disgraced a pig to drink. But this, which Métrailleur had not yet gone beyond roasting—ah, this was coffee indeed! and Philippe halted his steps, and stood still for quite a little while outside the grocery door, drinking in, with his heart even more than
