She found that it was a very difficult task to make a spoon. It took her no less than three days to do so, and when it was done, she was not at all sure that if she had shown it to anyone, he would have recognized it for a spoon. But she had made something that served her purpose, that was enough; besides, she ate alone and there would be no one to notice her utensils.
Now for the soup for which she longed! All she wanted was butter and sorrel. She would have to buy butter and naturally as she couldn't make milk she would have to buy that also.
The sorrel she would find wild in the fields and she could also find wild carrots and oyster plants. They were not so good as the cultivated vegetables but they would suit her very well indeed.
She not only had eggs and vegetables for her dinner, and her pots and pans, but there were fish in the pond and if she were sharp enough to catch them she would have fish too.
She needed a line and some worms. She had a long piece of string left over from the piece she had bought for her shoes and she had only to spend one sou for some hooks, then with a piece of horse hair she could pick up outside the blacksmith's door, she would have a line good enough to catch several kinds of fish; if the best in the pond passed disdainfully before her simple bait then she would have to be satisfied with little ones.
CHAPTER XIV
A BANQUET IN THE HUT
PERRINE was so busy of an evening that she let an entire week pass before she again went to see Rosalie. However, one of the girls at the factory who lodged with Mother Françoise had brought her news of her friend. Perrine, as well as being busy, had been afraid that she might see that terrible Aunt Zenobie and so she had let the days pass.
Then one evening after work she thought that she would not return at once to her little island. She had no supper to prepare. The night before she had caught some fish and cooked it, and she intended to have it cold for her supper that evening.