Again did she give vent to a dry laugh which distorted her wheedling face.  And she continued:  “How comical, eh?  The mother wouldn’t let me take the child to Rougemont, and now it’s going there just the same.  Ah! some things are bound to happen in spite of everything.”

Mathieu did not answer, but an icy chill had sped through his heart.  It was true, fate pitilessly took its own course.  What would become of that poor little fellow?  To what early death, what life of suffering or wretchedness, or even crime, had he been thus brutally cast?

But the cab continued rolling on, and for a long while neither Mathieu nor La Couteau spoke again.  It was only when the latter alighted in the Rue de Miromesnil that she began to lament, on seeing that it was already half-past five o’clock, for she felt certain that she would miss her train, particularly as she still had some accounts to settle and that other child upstairs to fetch.  Mathieu, who had intended to keep the cab and drive to the Northern terminus, then experienced a feeling of curiosity, and thought of witnessing the departure of the nurse-agents.  So he calmed La Couteau by telling her that if she would make haste he would wait for her.  And as she asked for a quarter of an hour, it occurred to him to speak to Norine again, and so he also went upstairs.

When he entered Norine’s room he found her sitting up in bed, eating one of the oranges which her little sisters had brought her.  She had all the greedy instincts of a plump, pretty girl; she carefully detached each section of the orange, and, her eyes half closed the while, her flesh quivering under her streaming outspread hair, she sucked one after another with her fresh red lips, like a pet cat lapping a cup of milk.  Mathieu’s sudden entry made her start, however, and when she recognized him she smiled faintly in an embarrassed way.

“It’s done,” he simply said.

She did not immediately reply, but wiped her fingers on her handkerchief.  However, it was necessary that she should say something, and so she began:  “You did not tell me you would come back—­I was not expecting you.  Well, it’s done, and it’s all for the best.  I assure you there was no means of doing otherwise.”

Then she spoke of her departure, asked the young man if he thought she might regain admittance to the works, and declared that in any case she should go there to see if the master would have the audacity to turn her away.  Thus she continued while the minutes went slowly by.  The conversation had dropped, Mathieu scarcely replying to her, when La Couteau, carrying the other child in her arms, at last darted in like a gust of wind.  “Let’s make haste, let’s make haste!” she cried.  “They never end with their figures; they try all they can to leave me without a copper for myself!”

But Norine detained her, asking:  “Oh! is that Rosine’s baby?  Pray do show it me.”  Then she uncovered the infant’s face, and exclaimed:  “Oh! how plump and pretty he is!” And she began another sentence:  “What a pity!  Can one have the heart—­” But then she remembered, paused, and changed her words:  “Yes, how heartrending it is when one has to forsake such little angels.”