In the woods and fields about Alne she began to breathe again, like a
bird loosed to the air after being shut in a wooden trap. Green corn,
green boughs, green turf, mellow chimes of church bells, humming of
golden bees, cradle songs of women spinning, homely odors of little herb
gardens and of orchard trees under cottage walls,--these had been around
her all her life; she only breathed freely among them.
She often felt tired, and her wooden shoes were wearing so thin that the
hot dust of the road at noonday burnt her feet through them. Sometimes,
too, she felt a curious brief faintness, such as she had never known, for
the lack of food and the long fatigue began to tell even on her hardy
little body.
But she went on bravely, rarely doing less than her twenty miles a day,
and sometimes more, walking often in the night to save time, and lying
down in cow-sheds or under haystacks in the noontide.
For the most part people were kind to her; they saw she was so very young
and so poor.
Women would give her leave to bathe herself in their bedchambers,
and children would ask her to wait on the village bench under the
chestnut-tree, while they brought her their pet lamb or their tumbler
pigeons to look at, but, for the most part--unless she was very, very
tired--she would not wait.
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