Chicon. All this time my sister was playing up and down the steps with a kitten. We went back into the cart and to mere Colas again. She was cross with us and pushed us about. A few days afterwards she took us to the railway station, and that evening we went to a big house, where there were a lot of little girls. Sister Gabrielle separated us at once. She said that my sister was big enough to be with the middle-sized girls, while I was to stay with the little ones. Sister Gabrielle was quite small, quite old, quite thin, and all bent up. She managed the dormitory and the refectory. She used to make the salad in a huge yellow jar. She tucked her sleeves up to her shoulders, and dipped her arms in and out of the salad. Her arms were dark and knotted, and when they came out of the jar, all shining and dripping, they made me think of dead branches on rainy days. I made a chum at once. She came dancing up to me and looked impudent, I thought. She did not stand any higher than the bench on which I was sitting. She put her elbows on my knees and said: "Why aren't you playing about?" I told her that I had a pain in my side. "Oh, of course," she said, "your mother had consumption, and Sister Gabrielle said you would soon die." She climbed up on to the bench, and sat down, hiding her little legs underneath her. Then she asked me my name and my age, and told me that her name was Ismerie, that she was older than I was, and that the doctor said she would never get any bigger. She told me also that the class mistress was called Sister Marie-Aimee, that she was very unkind, and punished you severely if you talked too much. Then all of a sudden she jumped down and shouted "Augustine." Her voice was like a boy's voice, and her legs were a little twisted. At the end of recreation I saw her on Augustine's back. Augustine was rolling her from one shoulder to the other, as if she meant to throw her down. When she passed me Ismerie said in that big voice of hers, "You will carry me too sometimes, won't you?" I soon became friends with Augustine. My eyes were not well. At night my eyelids used to close up tight, and I was quite blind until I had them washed. Augustine was told off to take me to the infirmary. She used to come and fetch me from the dormitory every morning. I could hear her coming before she got to the door. She caught hold of my hand and pulled me along, and she didn't mind a bit when I bumped against the beds. We flew down the passages like the wind and rushed down two flights of stairs like an avalanche. My feet only touched a step now and again. I used to go down those stairs as if I was falling down a well. Augustine had strong hands and held me tight. To go to the infirmary we had to pass behind the chapel and then in front of a little white house. There we hurried more than