"Very good," she said, rising to her feet. The woman's malignant eyes
looked poison and bullets at the two friends. "Very good. Nothing that
I can do is right here, and I am tired of slaving my life out. You
shall take a nurse."
Pons and Schmucke exchanged glances in dismay.
"Oh! you may look at each other like actors. I mean it. I shall ask
Dr. Poulain to find a nurse for you. And now we will settle accounts.
You shall pay me back the money that I have spent on you, and that I
would never have asked you for, I that have gone to M. Pillerault to
borrow another five hundred francs of him--"
"It ees his illness!" cried Schmucke--he sprang to Mme. Cibot and put
an arm round her waist--"haf batience."
"As for you, you are an angel, I could kiss the ground you tread
upon," said she. "But M. Pons never liked me, he always hated me.
Besides, he thinks perhaps that I want to be mentioned in his will--"
"Hush! you vill kill him!" cried Schmucke.
"Good-bye, sir," said La Cibot, with a withering look at Pons. "You
may keep well for all the harm I wish you. When you can speak to me
pleasantly, when you can believe that what I do is done for the best,
I will come back again. Till then I shall stay in my own room. You
were like my own child to me; did anybody ever see a child revolt
against its mother? . . . No, no, M. Schmucke, I do not want to hear
more. I will bring you _your_ dinner and wait upon _you_, but you must
take a nurse.
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