eady in flower. Madame
Alphonse walked straight along the path, but I got a lot of pleasure
out of walking in the soft grass.

We soon came to the wood where the wolf had taken my lamb. I had
always had a mysterious fear of this wood, and when we left the path by
the river to go through it I shook with fear. And yet the road was a
broad one. It must even have been a carriage road, for there were deep
ruts in it.

Above our heads heaps of pine needles tickled one another and rustled.
They made a gentle noise, not a bit like the whispering, with silences
in between, which I used to hear in the forest when the snow was on it.
But in spite of all I could not help looking behind me. We didn't walk
very far through the wood. The road turned to the left and we got to
the courtyard of the Lost Ford immediately. The little river ran
behind the stables as it did at Villevieille, but here the meadows were
quite close together, and the buildings looked as though they were
trying to hide among the sapling pines. The living house didn't look
anything like the farms thereabouts. The ground floor was built of
very thick old walls, and the first floor looked as though it had been
put on top of them as a makeshift. The house did not look a bit like a
castle to me. It made me think of an old tree trunk out of which a
baby tree had sprouted, and sprouted badly.

Madame Deslois came to the door when she heard us arrive. She winked
her little eyes as she looked at me and said at once in a loud voice
that she had dropped a halfpenny in the straw, and that it was very
funny that nobody had found it, as it had been lost for a week. While
she spoke she moved her foot about and stirred the straw which was in
front of the door. Madame Alphonse cannot have heard her. Her big
eyes were staring into the house, and she was almost excited when she
said why we had come. Madame Deslois said that she would take me to
the linen-room herself. She put the keys into the locks of the
cupboards, and after having told me to be very careful, and to
disarrange nothing, she left me alone.

It didn't take me long to open and close the great shining cupboards.
I should have liked to go away at once. This big cold linen-room
frightened me like a prison. My feet sounded on the tiles as though
there were deep vaults underneath them. All of a sudden it seemed to
me that I should never get out of this linen-room again. I listened to
see whether I