"May I give him a piece?" asked Perrine.
"Yes, you can give him a piece or two. When we've eaten this there is more in the cart. Give him some; he is so pleased to see you again, good old boy. You know he is a good boy."
"Yes, isn't he a dear?" said Perrine, softly.
"Now when you've eaten that you can tell me how you come to be in these woods pretty near starved to death. Sure it'd be a pity for you to kick the bucket yet awhile."
After she had eaten as much as was good for her, Perrine told her story, commencing with the death of her mother. When she came to the scene she had had with the baker woman at St. Denis, the woman took her pipe from her mouth and called the baker woman some very bad names.
"She's a thief, a thief!" she cried. "I've never given bad money to no one, 'cause I never take any from nobody. Be easy! She'll give that back to me next time I pass by her shop, or I'll put the whole neighborhood against her. I've friends at St. Denis, and we'll set her store on fire if she don't give it up!"
Perrine finished her story.
"You was just about goin' to die," said La Rouquerie; "what was the feelin' like?"
"At first I felt very sad," said Perrine, "and I think I must have cried like one cries in the night when one is suffocating; then I dreamed of Heaven and of the good food I should have there. Mama, who was waiting for me, had made me some milk chocolate; I could smell it."
"It's funny that this heat wave, which was going to kill you, really was the cause of yer bein' saved. If it hadn't been for this darned heat I never should have stopped to let that donkey rest in this wood, and then he wouldn't have found yer. What cher goin' to do now?"