which she had been present, and she related
with the greatest minuteness, details which were always the same, just
like a sportsman recounts his shots.

When Honore Bontemps entered her cottage, he found her preparing the
starch for the collars of the village women, and he said: "Good evening;
I hope you are pretty well, Mother Rapet?"

She turned her head round to look at him, and said: "Fairly well, fairly
well, and you?" "Oh! as for me, I am as well as I could wish, but my
mother is very poorly." "Your mother?" "Yes, my mother!" "What's the
matter with her?" "She is going to turn up her toes, that's what's the
matter with her!"

The old woman took her hands out of the water and asked with sudden
sympathy: "Is she as bad as all that?" "The doctor says she will not
last till morning." "Then she certainly is very bad!" Honore hesitated,
for he wanted to make a few preambulatory remarks before coming to his
proposal, but as he could hit upon nothing, he made up his mind
suddenly.

"How much are you going to ask to stop with her till the end? You know
that I am not rich, and I cannot even afford to keep a servant-girl. It
is just that which has brought my poor mother to this state, too much
work and fatigue! She used to work for ten, in spite of her ninety-two
years. You don't find any made of that stuff nowadays!..."

La Rapet answered gravely: "There are two prices: Forty sous by day and
three francs by night for the rich, and twenty sous by day, and forty by
night for the others. You shall pay me the twenty and forty." But the
peasant reflected, for he knew his mother well. He knew how tenacious of
life, vigorous and unyielding she was, and she might last another week,
in spite of the doctor's opinion, and so he said resolutely: "No, I
would rather you would fix a price until the end. I will take my chance,
one way or the other. The doctor says she will die very soon. If that
happens so much the better for you, and so much the worse for me, but if
she holds out till to-morrow or longer, so much the better for me and so
much the worse for you!"

The nurse looked at the man in astonishment, for she had never treated a
death as a speculative job, and she hesitated, tempted by the idea of
the possible gain, but almost immediately she suspected that he wanted
to juggle her, "I can say nothing until I have seen your mother," she
replied. "Then come with me and see her."

She washed her hands, and went with him immed