Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 1.djvu/226

Rh this girl. She had no wish to suffer, but she could not leave the good old grandmere to die alone. She wept, she prayed, and the saints gave her courage.

No, I will not go," she said; and in the morning at St. Malo she was shot with the old mother in her arms.'

'Could you do that for your grandmere?' I once asked, as she stopped for breath, because this tale always excited her. She crossed herself devoutly, and answered with fire in her eyes, and a resolute gesture of her little brown hands,—

'I should try, mademoiselle.'

I think she would, and succeed, too, for she was a brave and tender-hearted child, as she soon after proved.

A long drought parched the whole country that summer, and the gardens suffered much,