Papa Dupont did not seem to be greatly interested.  He had heard all this before, many a time, with insignificant phraseological variations.  Sofia, pausing unseen and unsuspected in the darkness just outside the doorway, could see him slouching deep in his chair, to one side of the table, his soft fat hands deep in the pockets of his trousers, his chin sunken on his chest, something dogged in the louring frown which he was bending upon nothing, something of genuine indifference in his passive attitude toward the blowsy virago who was leaning across the table the better to spit vituperation at him.

And he waited with singular patience until she had to stop for want of breath.  Then he shrugged and said heavily: 

“Still, I don’t see what else you propose to do, my old one.”

Apparently his old one was as poor in expedient as he.  “It is for nothing,” she said, acidly, “that one looks to you!”

“I have said my say.  If you have anything better to suggest....”  He made a rhetorical pause for reply, but Mama Therese was well blown and sulky for the moment.  “I am not old, not so old as you, and I have reason to believe the girl is not indifferent to my person.”

“Drooling old pig,” Mama Therese observed with reason:  “if you dream she would trouble to look twice at you—!”

“That remains to be seen.  And I, for one, fail to see how else we are to hold her.  All this money that has been coming in, paid on the dot every quarter—­that means there is more, much more to come to her.  Are you ready to give it up?”

“Never!” Mama Therese thumped the table vehemently.  “It is mine by rights, I have earned it.  Look at the way I have slaved for her, the tender care I have lavished upon her, ever since she was a little one in my arms.”

“By all means,” Papa Dupont agreed, “look at it, but don’t talk about it to her.  She might not understand you.  Also, do not depend upon her to endorse any claim you might set up based upon such assertions.”

“She is an ungrateful baggage!”

“Possibly; but she is human, she has a memory—­”

“Are you going to be sentimental about her again?” Mama Therese demanded.  “Pitiful old goat!”

“But I am not in the least sentimental,” Papa Dupont disclaimed.  “It is rather I who am practical, you who are sentimental.  I ask you:  Is there any way we can hold on to that money unless I marry Sofia?  You do not answer.  Why?  Because there is no other way.  Then I am practical.  But you will not admit that.  And why?  Because we have lived together for a number of years through force of habit, because once, very long ago, we were lovers, you and I—­so long ago that you have forgotten you ever had a softer name for me than pig or goat.  Who is the sentimentalist now—­eh?”

“Shut your face!” Mama Therese growled.  “You annoy me.  I have a presentiment I shall one day murder you.”

“You would have done that long ago,” Papa Dupont pointed out, “if you had had the courage.  Enough!  I am silent.  But when you are tired trying to think out another way, reflect on my solution.  Meantime, let me have another look at that accursed letter.”