During this time Mother Etienne was busy making as warm a home as she could for the fifteen little orphans.  Poor darlings.  In a wicker-basket she covered a layer of straw with another of wadding and fine down.  Upon this she put the ducklings one by one, and covered the whole with feathers; then closing the lid, she carried the basket to the stable where the air was always nice and warm.  All this took time; it was about six o’clock in the evening, the sun was going down, throwing a last oblique smile into the kitchen, gleaming here and there on the shining copper which hung on the walls.

CHAPTER III

YOLLANDE’S TROUSSEAU

As for Germaine, she, with Petit-Jacques to help her, had gone to milk the cows.  Mother Etienne soon joined them, and the two women came back to the house together.

Horror of horrors!  What a terrible sight.  Pale with fear they stood on the threshold of the kitchen not daring to move—­to enter.  Their hearts were in their mouths.  A ghost stood there in front of them—­Yollande—­and Germaine fell at Mother Etienne’s feet in utter consternation.  Yollande?  Yes, Yollande, but what a Yollande!  Heavens!  Yollande plucked, literally plucked!  Yollande emerging from her shroud like Lazarus from his tomb!  Yollande risen from the dead!  A cry of anguish burst from the heart of kind Mother Etienne.

“Yollande, oh, Yollande!”

The Cochin-China replied by a long shudder.

This is what had happened.

On falling into the water, Yollande after struggling fiercely succumbed to syncope, and her lungs ceasing to act she had ceased to breathe, so the water had not entered her lungs.  That is why she was not drowned.  Life was, so to speak, suspended.  The syncope lasted some time.  The considerable heat to which she was subjected when Germaine held her above the flaming newspaper had brought about a healthy reaction and in the solitude of the kitchen she had recovered consciousness.

After the first moment of terror was over, Germaine confessed her plan to Mother Etienne, who, glad to find Yollande still alive, forgave Germaine the disobedience which had saved her.

But the hen was still shivering, shaking in every limb, her skin all goose-flesh.  Dragging after her her travesty of a tail, she jumped onto the kitchen-table which she shook with her shivering.

“We can’t leave her like that any longer,” said Mother Etienne, “we must cover her up somehow,” and straightway she wrapped her up in all the cloths she could lay her hands on.  Germaine prepared some hot wine with sugar in it, and the two women fed her with it in spoonfuls,—­then they took a good drink of it themselves.  All three at once felt the better for it.  Yollande spent the night in these hastily-made swaddling clothes between two foot-warmers which threw out a gentle and continuous heat and kept away the catarrh with which the poor Cochin-China was threatened.  The great question which arose now was how they were to protect her from the cold in future.  Both of them cogitated over it.