“I burned my fingers in getting them for you, and now you won’t eat them!—And I must not eat them!” said she: then curbing her passion, she added, “But at any rate, I won’t be a thief. I am sure I did not think it was being a thief just to take a few chestnuts from an old woman who had such heaps and heaps; but Victoire says it is wrong, and I would not be a thief for all the chestnuts in the world—I’ll throw them all into the fire this minute!”
“No; give them back again to the old woman,” said Victoire.
“But, may be, she would scold me for having taken them,” said Babet; “or who knows but she might whip me?”
“And if she did, could you not bear it?” said Victoire. “I am sure I would rather bear twenty whippings than be a thief.”
“Twenty, whippings! that’s a great many,” said Babet; “and I am so little, consider—and that woman has such a monstrous arm!—Now, if it was Sister Frances, it would be another thing. But come! if you will go with me, Victoire, you shall see how I will behave.”
“We will all go with you,” said Victoire.
“Yes, all!” said the children; “And Sister Frances, I dare say, would go, if you asked her.”
Babet ran and told her, and she readily consented to accompany the little penitent to make restitution. The chestnut woman did not whip Babet, nor even scold her, but said she was sure that since the child was so honest as to return what she had taken, she would never steal again. This was the most glorious day of Babet’s life, and the happiest. When the circumstance was told to Madame de Fleury, she gave the little girl a bag of the best chestnuts the old women could select, and Babet with great delight shared her reward with her companions.
“But, alas! these chestnuts are not roasted. Oh, if we could but roast them!” said the children.
Sister Frances placed in the middle of the table on which the chestnuts were spread a small earthenware furnace—a delightful toy, commonly used by children in Paris to cook their little feasts.