ils which were
always the same, just like a sportsman talks of 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 I as for me, I am as well as I could wish, but my mother is very
sick."

"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 preliminary 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, how vigorous and unyielding she was. He knew, too,
that 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 immediately. They did not speak
on the road; she wa