“After bidding Celeste good-day in passing,” said she, “I intended to call on you, my dear lady.  But since you are here, we can settle our accounts here, if you are agreeable.”

Madame Menoux, however, was looking at her very anxiously.  “And how is my little Pierre?” she asked.

“Why, not so bad, not so bad.  He is not, you know, one of the strongest; one can’t say that he’s a big child.  Only he’s so pretty and nice-looking with his rather pale face.  And it’s quite certain that if there are bigger babies than he is, there are smaller ones too.”

She spoke more slowly as she proceeded, and carefully sought words which might render the mother anxious, without driving her to despair.  These were her usual tactics in order to disturb her customers’ hearts, and then extract as much money from them as possible.  On this occasion she must have guessed that she might carry things so far as to ascribe a slight illness to the child.

“However, I must really tell you, because I don’t know how to lie; and besides, after all, it’s my duty—­Well, the poor little darling has been ill, and he’s not quite well again yet.”

Madame Menoux turned very pale and clasped her puny little hands:  “Mon Dieu! he will die of it.”

“No, no, since I tell you that he’s already a little better.  And certainly he doesn’t lack good care.  You should just see how La Loiseau coddles him!  When children are well behaved they soon get themselves loved.  And the whole house is at his service, and no expense is spared The doctor came twice, and there was even some medicine.  And that costs money.”

The last words fell from La Couteau’s lips with the weight of a club.  Then, without leaving the scared, trembling mother time to recover, the nurse-agent continued:  “Shall we go into our accounts, my dear lady?”

Madame Menoux, who had intended to make a payment before returning to her shop, was delighted to have some money with her.  They looked for a slip of paper on which to set down the figures; first the month’s nursing, thirty francs; then the doctor, six francs; and indeed, with the medicine, that would make ten francs.

“Ah! and besides, I meant to tell you,” added La Couteau, “that so much linen was dirtied during his illness that you really ought to add three francs for the soap.  That would only be just; and besides, there were other little expenses, sugar, and eggs, so that in your place, to act like a good mother, I should put down five francs.  Forty-five francs altogether, will that suit you?”

In spite of her emotion Madame Menoux felt that she was being robbed, that the other was speculating on her distress.  She made a gesture of surprise and revolt at the idea of having to give so much money—­that money which she found so hard to earn.  No end of cotton and needles had to be sold to get such a sum together!  And her distress, between the necessity of economy on the one hand and her maternal anxiety on the other, would have touched the hardest heart.