was walking on straw. She used to eat her meals standing, and answer
her master and mistress quite rudely.

M. Alphonse had taken away the bench which was by the door, and had put
up little green bushes with trellis-work round them. He cut down the
old elm tree, too, to which the wood owl used to come on summer
evenings.

Of course the old tree had not shaded the house for a long time. It
only had one tuft of leaves right up on the top. It looked like a head
which bent over to listen to what people underneath were saying. The
woodcutters who came to cut it down said that it would not be an easy
thing to do. They said there was some danger that when it fell it
would crash through the roof of the house.

At last, after a lot of talk, they decided to rope it round and pull it
over so that it fell on to the dung-heap. It took two men all day to
cut it down, and just when we thought that it was going to drop nicely,
one of the ropes worked loose, and the old elm jumped and fell to one
side. It slipped down the roof, knocking down a chimney and a large
number of tiles, bumped a piece out of the wall, and fell right across
the door. Not one of its branches touched the dung-heap. M. Alphonse
yelled with rage. He laid hold of the axe belonging to one of the
woodcutters, and struck the tree so violent a blow that a piece of bark
flew against the linen-room window and broke a pane.

Madame Alphonse saw the bits of glass fall on me. She jumped up in
more excitement than I had ever seen her show, and with trembling hands
and fearful eyes she examined closely every bit of the table-cloth
which I was embroidering. But she did not see me wiping away the blood
from my cheek, which had been cut by a bit of glass. She was so afraid
that something might happen to the piles of linen which were beginning
to grow that she took me off next day to her mother's to show me how
the linen should be put into the closets.

Madame Alphonse's mother was called Madame Deslois, but when the
ploughmen talked about her they always said "the good woman of the
castle." She had only been to Villevieille once. She had come close
up to me and looked at me with her eyes half shut. She was a big woman
who walked bent double as if she were looking for something on the
ground. She lived in a big house called the Lost Ford.

Madame Alphonse took me along by a path near a little river. It was
the end of March, and the meadows were alr