Then Pierot would laugh sheepishly, shoulder his hatchet, and go off after wood, the inseparable Pierotte trotting by his side. As they went, it would be,—
"I wish I were a bird," or "I wish we could jump like that grasshopper;" or, "Pierotte, I wish our godfather had left us his money. We should be rich then."
For the children had the same godfather. Pierotte first, and then Pierot having been named after their father's cousin, a well-to-do peasant, who it was expected would remember his little relatives in his will. This hope had been disappointed, and the children's regrets were natural and excusable, since even the wise dame, their mother, did not conceal her opinion of Cousin Pierre's conduct, which she considered irregular and dishonest. Children soon learn to join in chorus with older voices, and Pierot and Pierotte, in this case, found it particularly easy, as it chimed with the habit of their lives.
One warm July morning their mother roused them for an early breakfast, and sent them into the forest after wood.
"My last fagot is in," she said. "You must bind and tie smartly to-day. And, Pierotte, help thy brother all that thou canst, for the father cannot spare him to go again this week, and on Saturday is the sennight's baking."
So they set forth. The sun was not fairly risen, but his light went before his coming, and even in the dim forest-paths it was easy to distinguish leaf from flower. Shadows fell across the way from the trees, which stood so motionless that they seemed still asleep. Heavy dew hung on the branches; the air was full of a rare perfume, made up of many different fragrances, mixed and blended by the cunning fingers of the night. A little later, and the light broadened. Rays of sun filtered through the boughs, a wind stirred, and the trees roused themselves, each with a little shake and quiver. Somehow, the forest looked unfamiliar, and like a new place to the children that morning. They were not often there at so early an hour, it is true, but this did not quite account for the strange aspect of the woods. Neither of them knew, or, if they knew, they had forgotten, that it was Midsummer's Day, the fairies' special festival. Nothing met their eyes, no whir of wings or sparkle of bright faces from under the fern-branches, but a sense of something unusual was in the air, and the little brother and sister walked along in silence, peering curiously this way and that, with an instinctive expectation of unseen wonders.
"Isn't it lovely?" whispered Pierotte, at last. "It never looked so pretty here as it does to-day. See that wild-rose,—how many flowers it has! Oh! what was that? It waved at me!"
"What waved?"
"The rose. It waved a white arm at me!"
"Nonsense! It was the wind," replied Pierot, sturdily, leading the way into a side-path which led off from the rose-bush.