



Produced by David Widger









THE MERRIE TALES OF JACQUES TOURNEBROCHE

AND CHILD LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY

By Anatole France

John Lane Company, MCMXIX

Copyright 1909

John Lane Company





CHILD LIFE IN TOWN AND COUNTRY




FANCHON

[Illustration: 164]




I

FANCHON went early one morning, like Little Red Riding-Hood, to see
her grandmother, who lives right at the other end of the village. But
Fanchon did not stop like little Red Riding-Hood, to gather nuts in the
wood. She went straight on her way and she did not meet the wolf. From
a long way off she saw her grandmother sitting on the stone step at her
cottage door, a smile on her toothless mouth and her arms, as dry and
knotty as an old vine-stock, open to welcome her little granddaughter.
It rejoices Fanchon's heart to spend a whole day with her grandmother;
and her grandmother, whose trials and troubles are all over and who
lives as happy as a cricket in the warm chimney-corner, is rejoiced too
to see her son's little