re always similar, just as a
sportsman recounts his luck.

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

She turned her head round to look at him, and said: "As usual, as usual,
and you?" "Oh! as for me, I am as well as I could wish, but my mother is
not well." "Your mother?" "Yes, my mother!" "What is 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 preparatory remarks before coming to his
proposition; but as he could hit upon nothing, he made up his mind
suddenly.

"How much will you ask to stay with her till the end? You know that I am
not rich, and I can not even afford to keep a servant girl. It is just
that which has brought my poor mother to this state--too much worry
and fatigue! She did the work of 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, 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 for the whole time 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 her, but if she holds out till to-morrow or longer, so much the
better for her and so much the worse for you!"

The nurse looked at the man in astonishment, for she had never treated a
death as a speculation, and she hesitated, tempted by the idea of the
possible gain, but she suspected that he wanted to play her a trick. "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 walked with short, hasty steps, while
he strode on wi