Then, in the softness of the coming night, little Perrine seemed to feel more impressed with the talk that she had had with her mother, and leaning her head against her donkey's, she let the tears, which she had kept back so long, flow silently, and Palikare, in mute sympathy, bent his head and licked her hands.
CHAPTER II
GRAIN-OF-SALT IS KIND
MANY times that night Perrine, lying beside her mother, had jumped up and run to the well for water so as to have it fresh. In spite of her desire to fetch the doctor as early as possible the next morning, she had to wait until Grain-of-Salt had risen, for she did not know what doctor to call in. She asked him.
Certainly he knew of a good doctor! and a famous one, too! who made his rounds in a carriage, not on foot, like doctors of no account. Dr. Cendrier, rue Rublet, near the Church; he was the man! To find the street she had only to follow the railway tracks as far as the station.
When he spoke of such a great doctor who made his rounds in a carriage, Perrine was afraid that she would not have enough money to pay him, and timidly she questioned Grain-of-Salt, not daring to ask outright what she wanted to know. Finally he understood.
"What you'd have to pay?" he asked. "It's a lot, but it won't be more than forty sous, and so as to make sure, you'll have to pay him in advance."
Following the directions that Grain-of-Salt gave her, she easily found the house, but the doctor had not yet risen, so she had to wait. She sat down on a bench in the street, outside a stable door, behind which a coachman was harnessing a horse to a carriage. She thought if she waited there she would be sure to catch the doctor as he left the house, and if she gave him her forty sous he would consent to come. She was quite sure that he would not if she had simply asked him to visit a patient who was staying in the Guillot Field.
She waited a long time; her suspense increased at the thought that her mother would be wondering what kept her away so long.