Napoleon laughed and shook his head. "This box will make a good home for it," he said. "If we find some sand, some stones and some water." "It is a fish then!" declared her father, only he called it "un poisson."
In the meantime the little girl placed the package on the table and opened it carefully. "Oh—oo! la-la," she said, as out walked, very, very slowly, a baby turtle—just two inches long from tip to tip.
There were directions with it, from the vicar at St. Remo, explaining that it was full size and would need a little water to live in, a few crumbs and flies to live on.
So with stones taken from a flower pot, and sand from a celery box, a nice home was made inside the tin biscuit box.
On an island or dock formed by the stones and a bit of wood, the little turtle came out to sun himself when tired of the water. It was amusing, indeed, to watch him study his own image which was reflected in the side of the tin box. This tin, you see, was as clear and bright as a mirror, and to watch him bob his head about as he stopped to reflect on his new estate made the whole family laugh like children.
His little mistress wanted to call him "Vanity," but her Uncle Napoleon told her that the good vicar of St. Remo had named him "Jean Batiste," which is the French for John the Baptist!
Oisette was a tender-hearted little girl and she did not long forget that there were some little birds out in the cold dooryard, waiting for her to feed them. "Now, you see," she explained to her uncle, "since you have entered our house and brought in a turtle, I can carry out some crumbs to the poor oiseaux,—and, I suppose," she mused, "it means that we shall have turtles coming in all the year since a turtle was the first thing brought in on the glad New Year's Day."
Her Uncle Napoleon laughed very hard at this philosophy, and said: "But I should think the milk was brought in the first thing very early this morning, was it not, little one? Certainly you will have milk all the year, will you not?"
"Yes," chimed in her father. "We must thank the Bon Dieu that we shall have milk all the year."
Why had they not thought of that sooner, Oisette wondered, and not kept the birds waiting all this time! She could hear them now, chirp, chirp, chirp as though to hurry her.