It is too far for me,
and especially for the child who is not strong. I don't dare leave him
alone in the house here; and I don't dare leave him with the
neighbours. They are too rough and they knock the little fellow about
and he doesn't understand it is only done in joke, and he cries and
calls for me and gets such a fever that he almost died one day when I
left him to go do washing still further away."
"But couldn't you get the neighbours to bring you some water?" asked
Esperance.
"My young lady, there are thirteen in that family, and one of them is
ill to death!" she added sighing.
Albert joined in, "Where is the spring?"
"Over there, near the church in the next village."
"Very good, we three will go there," he said, calling Maurice and
Jean, "and we will bring you back lots of water?"
"Wait till I give you...." she opened the cupboard. "Here is the pail.
Take care, it is very heavy."
Albert began to laugh. "Come along, my friends. I have got an idea."
Esperance watched him as he went out and for an instant she loved him.
While waiting for the young men to return she settled her mother on a
chest. The only chair in the house was a straw arm-chair with a high
back, on which the old Borderie was sitting and which she had not
thought of offering.
"No doubt," said Mme. Darbois in a low tone, "little by little she has
had to sell everything she had."
The girls opened a bottle of wine, the jar of prunes and the jar of
candy, and arranged them on the board pointed out by the poor woman,
who thanked them simply and said, "Ah! my little lad, how good it will
be for him!"
"And for you too, you know.
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