The curé was right; Marianne had her good qualities—I was almost beginning to wonder to myself as I pulled drowsily at the black pipe if her good qualities did not outweigh her bad ones, when the Essence of Selfishness awakened and yawned. And so it was high time to send this spoiled child of mine to bed.
Marianne called her "ma belle petite," though her real name was Yvonne—Yvonne Louise Tournéveau.
Yvonne kept her black eyes from early dawn until dark upon a dozen of the Père Bourron's cows in her charge, who grazed on a long point of the marsh, lush with salt grass, that lay sheltered back of the dunes fronting the open sea.
Now and then, when a cow strayed over the dunes on to the hard beach beyond to gaze stupidly at the breakers, the little girl's voice would become as authoritative as a boy's. "Eh ben, tu sais!" she would shout as she ran to head the straggler off, adding some sound whacks with a stick until the cow decided to lumber back to the rest. "Ah mais!" Yvonne would sigh as she seated herself again in the wire-grass, tucking her firm bronzed legs under a patched skirt that had once served as a winter petticoat for the Mère Bourron.
Occasionally a trudging coast guard or a lone hunter in passing would call "Bonjour!" to her, and since she was pretty, this child of fifteen, they would sometimes hail her with "Ça va, ma petite!" and Yvonne would flush and reply bravely, "Mais oui, M'sieur, merci."
Since she was only a little girl with hair as black as a gipsy's, a ruddy olive skin, fresh young lips and a well-knit, compact body, hardened by constant exposure to the sea air and sun, no one bothered their heads much about her name. She was only a child who smiled when the passerby would give her a chance, which was seldom, and when she did, she disclosed teeth as white as the tiny shells on the beach. There were whole days on the marsh when she saw no one.
At noon, when the cracked bell in the distant belfry of the gray church of Pont du Sable sent its discordant note quavering across the marsh, Yvonne drew forth a sailor's knife from where it lay tucked safe within the breast of her coarse chemise, and untying a square of blue cotton cloth, cut in two her portion of peasant bread, saving half the bread and half a bottle of Père Bourron's thinnest cider for the late afternoon.
There were days, too, when Marianne coming up from the sea with her nets, stopped to rest beside the child and talk. Yvonne having no mother which she could remember, Marianne had become a sort of transient mother to her, whom the incoming tide sometimes brought her and whom she would wait for with uncertain expectancy, often for days.