SHE HAD SOME TIME AGO DECIDED ON THE SHAPE.
The old woman cut off two yards, and Perrine noticed that it was not white nor shiny like the one she had admired in the window.
"Any more?" asked the shopkeeper when she had torn the calico with a sharp, dry rip.
"I want some thread also," said Perrine; "a spool of white, number forty."
Now it was Perrine's turn to leave the store with her little newspaper parcel hugged tightly to her heart. Out of her three francs (sixty centimes) she had spent eighteen, so there still remained forty-two until the following Saturday. She would have to spend twenty sous for bread, so that left her fourteen sous for extras.
She ran back all the way to her little island. When she reached her cabin she was out of breath, but that did not prevent her from beginning her work at once. She had some time ago decided upon the shape she would give her chemise. She would make it quite straight, first, because that was the simplest and the easiest way for one who had never cut out anything before and who had no scissors, and secondly, because she could use the string that was in her old one for this new one.
Everything went very well; to begin with, there was no cutting in the straight piece. Perhaps there was nothing to admire in her work but at any rate she did not have to do it over again. But when the time came for shaping the openings for the head and arms then she experienced difficulties! She had only a knife to do the cutting and she was so afraid that she would tear the calico. With a trembling hand she took the risk. At last it was finished, and on Tuesday morning she would be able to go to the factory wearing a chemise earned by her own work, cut and sewn by her own hands.
That day when she went to Mother Françoise's; it was Rosalie who came to meet her with her arm in a sling.
"Are you better?" asked Perrine.