leave his book behind him one day; but he never forgot it, and
always took it to his room with him. One of my great troubles was that
I could not find anything to read in the farm, and I used to pick up
any bits of printed paper that I saw lying about. The farmer's wife
had noticed this, and said that I should become a miser some day. One
Sunday, when I had screwed up my courage and asked Eugene for a book,
he gave me a book of songs. All through the summer I took it with me
to the fields. I made up tunes for the songs which I liked best. Then
I got tired of them, and when I was helping Pauline to clean up the
farm for All Saints Day, I found several almanacks. Pauline told me to
take them up to the garret, but I pretended to forget, and carried them
off to read in secret, one after the other. They were full of amusing
stories, and the winter went by without my ever noticing the cold.

When I took them up to the garret at last, I hunted about up there to
see if I could not find any others. The only thing I found was a
little book without any cover. The corners of the leaves were rolled
up as if it had been carried about in somebody's pocket for a long
time. The two first pages were missing, and the third page was so
dirty that I could not read the print. I took it under the skylight,
to see a little better, and I saw that it was called "The Adventures of
Telemachus." I opened it here and there, and the few words that I read
interested me so much that I put it in my pocket at once.

While I was on my way down from the garret, it suddenly occurred to me
that Eugene might have put the book there, and that he might come and
look for it at any time. So I put it back on the black rafter where I
had found it. Every time I could manage to go to the garret I looked
to see whether it was still in its place, and I read it as much and as
often as ever I could.

Just about that time I had another sick sheep. Its flanks were hollow,
as though it had not eaten for a long while. I went and asked the
farmer's wife what I ought to do with it. She was plucking a chicken,
and asked me whether the sheep was "drawn." I didn't answer at once.
I didn't quite know what she meant. Then I thought that probably
whenever a sheep was ill it was "drawn," and I said "Yes." And so as
to make it quite clear, I added, "It is quite flat." Pauline began to
laugh at me. She called Eugene, and said, "Eugene! One of Marie
Clai