"D'avoir désobéi à ma mère 2 fois.
"D'avoir manqué de respect envers elle 1 fois.
"De m'été disputée avec mon frère 2 fois.
"D'avoir fait des petits mensonges 4 fois.
"Je m'accuse de tous ces pèches et de ceux dont je ne me souviens pas.
"Je demande pardon de Dieu et à vous, mon père, la pénitence et l'absolution selon que vous m'en jugerez digne."
Whether this list of offences truly represented the burden of her transgressions for the past three weeks it would be hard to say. It is possible that Val could have made out a longer and more comprehensive one for her, as she often threatened to do when Haidee vexed her. Anyway, the latter folded up her piece of paper with a complacency that either betokened a clear conscience or a heart hardened in crime. She computed that her penance would be to recite a decade of the rosary, and she knew that the curé would then speak of the next Church feast, and of the wishes preferred by the Sacred Heart and the Blessed Virgin, tell her to invoke the aid of the Saints when she felt herself tempted to sin, to try always to give a good example to her little brother, and to be very pious so that her mother would be converted and become a Catholic. Both Val and Haidee had long since given up explaining that they were not mother and daughter. They found that it saved time and a lot of questions just to let people think what they liked.
Putting on her hat Haidee now popped her head out of the window and gave a hoot to Hortense, who was below in the yard cleaning her boots on the garden seat. Just as they were about to start Val came down-stairs and begged Haidee to go to the butcher's shop on her way back, and bring home something for Sunday's dinner.
"What kind of something?" asked Haidee belligerently, for the butcher's shop had no allure for her. There ensued a discussion as to which was the most economical meat to get. Hortense, waiting at the bottom of the steps, piped in with the announcement that every one ought to eat lamb on First Communion Sunday. Val and Haidee looked at each other. Vaguely they knew that the price of lamb was high. But suddenly it came into Val's mind how sick the children must be of raie, and stewed veal, and that though funds were low the play was nearly finished. They would have a nice English dinner for once. Roast lamb and mint sauce! She gave Haidee her last louis to change.
"Pick some mint from the cliff-side as you come back," she enjoined. French peasants have no use for mint in their cooking. Some English visitors had once planted a root of it in pére Duval's garden, but after they were gone he flung it out again on to the cliff-side, where it had increased and multiplied until it was now a large bed.