[Illustration: 216]
AUTUMN is here. The wind blowing through the woods whirls about the dead
leaves. The chestnuts are stripped bare already and lift their black
skeleton arms in the air. And now the beeches and hornbeams are shedding
_their_ leaves. The birches and aspens are turned to trees of gold, and
only the great oak keeps his coronal of green.
The morning is fresh; a keen wind is chasing the clouds across a grey
sky and reddening the youngsters’ fingers. Pierre, Babet, and Jeannot
are off to collect the dead leaves, the leaves that once, when they were
still alive, were full of dew and songs of birds, and which now strew
the ground in thousands and thousands with their little shrivelled
corpses. They are dead, but they smell good. They will make a fine
litter for Riquette, the goat, and Roussette, the cow. Pierre has taken
his big basket; he is quite a little man. Babet has her sack; she is
quite a little woman. Jeannot comes last trundling the wheelbarrow.
Down the hill they go at a run. At the edge of the wood they find the
other village children, who are come too to lay in a store of dead
leaves for the winter. It is not play, this; it is work.
But never think the children are sad, because they are at work. Work is
serious, yes; it is not sad. Very often the little ones mimic it in fun,
and children’s games, most times, are copies of their elders’ workaday
doings.
Now they are hard at it. The boys do their part in silence. They are
peasant lads, and will soon be men, and peasants do not talk much. But
it is different with the little peasant girls; _their_ tongues go at a
fine pace, as they fill the baskets and bags.
But now the sun is climbing higher and warming the country pleasantly.
From the cottage roofs rise light puffs of smoke. The children know what
that means. The smoke tells them the pease-soup is cooking in the pot.
One more armful of dead leaves, and the little workers will take the
road home. It is a stiff climb. Bending under sacks or toiling behind
barrows, they soon get hot, and the sweat comes out in beads. Pierre,
Babet and Jeannot stop to take breath.
But the thought of the pease-soup keeps up their courage. Puffing and
blowing, they reach home at last. Their mother is waiting for them on
the door-step and calls out: “Come along, children, the soup is ready.”
Our little friends find this capital. There’s no soup so good as what
you have worked for.