den amongst the trees.
The birds and beasts could not suspect that it was the work of man
behind which he could lie in ambush with his gun.

At that moment she heard a noise at her feet which frightened her and a
water hen jumped into the water, terrified. Then looking about her she
saw a nest made of grass and feathers in which were ten white eggs,
dirty little eggs with small dark spots.

Instead of being placed on the ground amongst the grass the nest was
floating on the water. She examined it but without touching it, and
noticed that it was made in a way to go up and down according to the
flow of the water, and was so surrounded with reeds that neither the
current nor the wind could carry it away.

The mother hen, anxious, took up her position at a distance and stayed
there. Perrine hid herself in the high grass and waited to see if she
would come back to her nest.

As she did not return, she went on with her walk, and again and again
the rustling of her dress frightened other birds. The water hens, so
lissom in their escape, ran to the floating leaves of the water lilies
without going under. She saw birds everywhere.

When an hour later she returned to her little home the hut was hidden
half in the shadows of night. It was so quiet and pretty she thought,
and how pleased she was that she had shown as much intelligence as these
birds ... to make her nest here.

With Perrine, as with many little children, it was the events of the day
which shaped her dreams by night. The unhappiness through which she had
passed the last few months had often colored her dreams, and many times
since her troubles had commenced, she had awakened in the night with the
perspiration pouring off her. Her sleep was disturbed with nightmares
caused by the miseries she had experienced in the day.

Now since she had been at Maraucourt and had new hopes and was at work,
the nightmares had been less frequent and so she was not so sad.

Now she thought of what she was going to do at the factory the next day,
of the skirt and waist that she would make, of her underwear.

Now on this particular evening after she had wandered over the fields
surrounding her home and had entered her little nest to go to sleep,
strange visions passed before her sleepy eyes. She thought that she was
walking about the field exploring, and came upon a great big kitchen, a
wonderful kitchen like in castles, and there were a number of little
dwarfs of the most diab