nd by driving with her himself to
the Foundling Hospital, so that he might be in a position to inform
Beauchene that the child had really been deposited there, in his
presence. So he told La Couteau that he would go down with her, take a
cab, and bring her back.

"All right; that will suit me. Let us be off! It's a pity to wake the
little one, since he's so sound asleep; but all the same, we must pack
him off, since it's decided."

With her dry hands, which were used to handling goods of this
description, she caught up the child, perhaps, however, a little
roughly, forgetting her assumed wheedling good nature now that she was
simply charged with conveying it to hospital. And the child awoke and
began to scream loudly.

"Ah! dear me, it won't be amusing if he keeps up this music in the cab.
Quick, let us be off."

But Mathieu stopped her. "Won't you kiss him, Norine?" he asked.

At the very first squeal that sorry mother had dipped yet lower under
her sheets, carrying her hands to her ears, distracted as she was by
the sound of those cries. "No, no," she gasped, "take him away; take him
away at once. Don't begin torturing me again!"

Then she closed her eyes, and with one arm repulsed the child who seemed
to be pursuing her. But when she felt that the agent was laying him on
the bed, she suddenly shuddered, sat up, and gave a wild hasty kiss,
which lighted on the little fellow's cap. She had scarcely opened her
tear-dimmed eyes, and could have seen but a vague phantom of that poor
feeble creature, wailing and struggling at the decisive moment when he
was being cast into the unknown.

"You are killing me! Take him away; take him away!"

Once in the cab the child suddenly became silent. Either the jolting of
the vehicle calmed him, or the creaking of the wheels filled him with
emotion. La Couteau, who kept him on her knees, at first remained
silent, as if interested in the people on the footwalks, where the
bright sun was shining. Then, all of a sudden, she began to talk,
venting her thoughts aloud.

"That little woman made a great mistake in not trusting the child to me.
I should have put him out to nurse properly, and he would have grown up
finely at Rougemont. But there! they all imagine that we simply worry
them because we want to do business. But I just ask you, if she had
given me five francs for myself and paid my return journey, would that
have ruined her? A pretty girl like her oughtn't to be hard up fo