"Is there anything else you would fancy? I'll go and fetch anything you want. What would you like, mama, dearie?"
"I think I prefer rice," said her mother.
Little Perrine threw a handful of rice into the saucepan that she had put on the fire and waited for the water to boil; then she stirred the rice with two white sticks that she had stripped of their bark. She only left her cooking once, to run over to Palikare to say a few loving words to him. The donkey was eating the thistles with a satisfaction, the intensity of which was shown by the way his long ears stood up.
When the rice was cooked to perfection, Perrine filled a bowl and placed it at her mother's bedside, also two glasses, two plates and two forks. Sitting down on the floor, with her legs tucked under her and her skirts spread out, she said, like a little girl who is playing with her doll: "Now we'll have a little din-din, mammy, dear, and I'll wait on you."
In spite of her gay tone, there was an anxious look in the child's eyes as she looked at her mother lying on the mattress, covered with an old shawl that had once been beautiful and costly, but was now only a faded rag.
The sick woman tried to swallow a mouthful of rice, then she looked at her daughter with a wan smile.
"It doesn't go down very well," she murmured.
"You must force yourself," said Perrine; "the second will go down better, and the third better still."
"I cannot; no, I cannot, dear!"
"Oh, mama!"