nd gave us some milk to drink. I
heard her say to pere Chicon, "You really think their father will take
care of them, then?" Pere Chicon shook his head, and knocked his pipe
against the table. Then he made a funny face and said, "He may be
anywhere. Young Girard told me he had met him on the Paris road."
After a while pere Chicon took us to a big house with a lot of steps
leading up to the door. He had a long talk with a gentleman who waved
his arms about and talked about the dignity of labour. I wondered what
that was. The gentleman put his hand on my head and patted it, and I
heard him say several times, "He did not tell me that he had any
children." I understood that he was talking of my father, and I asked
if I could not see him. The gentleman looked at me without answering,
and then asked pere Chicon, "How old is she?" "About five," said pere
Chicon. All this time my sister was playing up and down the steps with
a kitten. We went back into the cart and to mere Colas again. She was
cross with us and pushed us about. A few days afterwards she took us
to the railway station, and that evening we went to a big house, where
there were a lot of little girls.

Sister Gabrielle separated us at once. She said that my sister was big
enough to be with the middle-sized girls, while I was to stay with the
little ones. Sister Gabrielle was quite small, quite old, quite thin,
and all bent up. She managed the dormitory and the refectory. She
used to make the salad in a huge yellow jar. She tucked her sleeves up
to her shoulders, and dipped her arms in and out of the salad. Her
arms were dark and knotted, and when they came out of the jar, all
shining and dripping, they made me think of dead branches on rainy days.

I made a chum at once. She came dancing up to me and looked impudent,
I thought. She did not stand any higher than the bench on which I was
sitting. She put her elbows on my knees and said: "Why aren't you
playing about?" I told her that I had a pain in my side. "Oh, of
course," she said, "your mother had consumption, and Sister Gabrielle
said you would soon die." She climbed up on to the bench, and sat
down, hiding her little legs underneath her. Then she asked me my name
and my age, and told me that her name was Ismerie, that she was older
than I was, and that the doctor said she would never get any bigger.
She told me also that the class mistress was called Sister Marie-Aimee,
that sh