Old Bibiche always thought that I was falling asleep. She would come and pull my sleeve, and take me off to bed. Her bed was next to mine. She mumbled her prayers while she was undressing, and always blew the lamp out without waiting to see whether I was ready.
Directly after the harvest, Bibiche let me go to the fields alone with her dog. Old Castille didn't care for my company. She used to leave me whenever she could and go back to the farm to Bibiche. I had a lot of trouble in keeping my lambs together. They ran every way at once. I compared myself to Sister Marie-Aimée, who always said that her little flock was hard to manage. And yet she used to get us together at one stroke of the bell and she could always make us perfectly quiet by raising her voice a little. But I might raise my voice or crack my whip as much as I liked, the lambs did not understand me, and I was obliged to run about all round the flock as though I were a sheep dog. One evening two lambs were missing. I always stood in the doorway every evening to let them in one by one so that I could count them easily. I went into the pen and tried to count them again. It was not easy and I had to give it up at last, for every time I counted them again I made their number more than there really were. At last I made up my mind that I must have counted them wrong the first time, and I did not say anything to anybody.
Next morning when I let them out I counted them once more. There really were two missing. I felt very uneasy. All day long I hunted about the fields for them, and in the evening, when I was quite certain that they were missing, I told the farmer's wife. We searched high and low for those lambs for several days, but we could not find them. The farmer first, and then his wife took me apart, and tried to make me confess that men had come and taken the lambs away. They promised me that I should not be scolded if I would tell the truth. It was no good my saying that I really did not know what had become of them, I could see that they did not believe me.
After this I was frightened when I went into the fields because I knew now that there were men who hid themselves and came and stole the sheep. I was always thinking that I saw some one moving about behind the bushes. I very soon learned to count my lambs by glancing at them, and whether they were all together or scattered about, I knew in a minute whether all of them were there.