Welcome to Homeschool Story Time: Week 38.
Today’s story takes place in Southern France.
It’s about a woman who meets a poor girl on her walks.
The woman learns something special from this simple girl and her family.
Keep reading to see what she learns.
Fanchette
by Anna Livingston
While spending a winter in a quiet old town in Southern France, I used to meet in my walks, a girl about ten years of age, trudging along, bare-footed, carrying on her arm a large basket.
The first time we met she looked up at me with such a pleasant smile, that I bowed and smiled in return. After a few days we became still better acquainted, and she would say, “Bon jour, madame!” in answer to my greeting.
One day, besides the basket, she carried a large fagot, and her apron full of wild flowers and drooping vines. Then I thought I would like to know more about her. So I said, “You look tired, my little girl: will you not sit down under this old tree with me, and tell me where you live, and where you go every day with that big basket?”
She seemed quite pleased to do so, and then told me that her father was a wood-cutter, and that every day she had to walk three miles to the forest to carry him his dinner, and sometimes to help bind fagots.
“My name,” she said, “is Fanchette, and I have a sister Marie, and a sister Claire, and a baby-brother named Pierre. My sister Marie is ill, and cannot leave her bed, and I have gathered these flowers to take to her.”
“But are you not tired with walking so far?”
“A little tired, madam,” she said; “but I do not mind, for Marie will be so pleased with these flowers, and baby will clap his hands and laugh when he sees me coming. Then mother will take this fagot and light the fire, and give us our supper, and we shall be very merry.
“There is my home,” she said, pointing to a small brown thatched cottage under a hill not far away. “Will you not come to see us some day, madam?”
I promised to do so, and when I kept my word soon after, I found all as she had said. Though they were poor, and the mother had to work hard, their home was so neat, and all seemed so happy in it, that it was a pleasure to go there. I repeated my visits many times, carrying dainties for the invalid, who was soon quite well and strong; and I shall never forget bright, cheery little Fanchette.
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Many blessings,
