Sitting in her office at the end of the shop, shut off from it by glass
windows, pretty Madame Bayard, in a black gown and with her hair in
sober braids, was writing steadily in an enormous ledger with leather
corners, while her husband, following his morning custom, stopped at the
door to scold his workmen, who had not finished unloading a dray from
the Northern Railway, which blocked the road, and carried to the
druggist of the Rue Vieille du Temple a dozen casks of glucose.
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"I have bad news to tell you," said Madame Bayard, sticking her pen in a
cup of leaden shot, when her husband had entered the glass cage. "Poor
Voisin is dead."
"The nurse of Leon? Poor woman! And her little daughter?"
"That is the saddest part, my dear. A relative of poor Voisin writes me
that they are too poor to take charge of the child, and she must be sent
to an orphan asylum."
"Oh, those peasants!"
The druggist was silent for a moment, rubbing his thick blond beard;
then suddenly looking at his wife with kindly eyes:
"Say, Mimi, the child is the foster sister of our Leon. Suppose we give
her a home?"
"I should think so," was the quiet reply of the pretty wife.
"Well done," cried Bayard, as, caring little if he were seen by his
clerks and store-boys, he leaned towards his wife and kissed her
forehead, "well done! you're a good woman, Mimi. We will take little
Norine with us, and bring her up with Leon. That won't ruin us, eh?
Besides, I have just made a good stroke in quinine. We will go after the
child Sunday to Argenteuil, sha'n't we?"
"We will make that our Sunday excursion."