girl, scrambled into the hedges,
climbed the trees, messed about in the ponds, and used to come home at
night with her pockets full of creatures of all kinds, which frightened
me and made la mere Colas furiously angry.

What I hated most were the earthworms. The red elastic things made me
shiver with horror, and if I happened to step on one it made me quite
ill. When I had a pain in my side la mere Colas used to forbid my
sister to go out. But my sister got tired of remaining indoors and
wanted to go out and take me with her. So she used to go and collect
earthworms, and hold them up close to my face. Then I said that I
wasn't in pain any more, and la mere Colas used to send us both out of
doors. One day my sister threw a handful of earthworms on to my dress.
I jumped back so quickly that I fell into a tub of hot water. La mere
Colas was very angry while she undressed me. I was not very much hurt.
She promised my sister a good slapping, and called to the sweeps, who
were passing, to come in and take her away. All three of them came in,
with their black bags and their ropes. My sister howled and cried for
mercy. I was very much ashamed at being all undressed.

My father often took us to a place where there were men who drank wine.
He used to put me on a table among the glasses, and make me sing. The
men would laugh and kiss me, and try and make me drink wine. It was
always dark when we went home. My father took long steps, and rocked
himself as he walked. He nearly tumbled down lots of times. Sometimes
he would begin to cry and say that his house had been stolen. Then my
sister used to scream. It was always she who used to find the house.
One morning la mere Colas got angry with us and told us that we were
children of misfortune, and that she would not feed us any longer. She
said we could go and look for our father, who had gone away nobody knew
where. When her anger had passed she gave us our breakfasts as usual,
but a few days afterwards we were put into pere Chicon's cart. The
cart was full of straw and bags of corn. I was tucked away behind in a
little hollow between the sacks. The cart tipped down at the back, and
every jolt made me slip on the straw.

I was very frightened all the way along. Every time I slipped I
thought I was going to fall out of the cart, or that the sacks were
going to fall on me. We stopped at an inn. A woman lifted us down,
shook the straw on our dresses, a