Mean as she was, she felt the disgrace befalling her as if she drove her next of kin to this step.
"No, I will take charge of him," she said.
"Good," said the doctor, delighted to find a moist spot in this desert.
"I will recommend him to the Augustin Monastery and have them take him as a boy of all work."
The doctor was a philosopher, we have mentioned; which means that he was the opponent of all the churchmen. He resolved to tear this recruit from the enemy with all the warmth that the Augustines would have shown to deprive him of a disciple.
"Well," he rejoined, sticking his hand in his deepest pocket, "since you are in so hard a position, dear Miss Angelique, that you are forced to send your nephew into beggary, I will find somebody else to take him and the sum I am going to set aside for his maintenance. I am obliged to return to America. Meanwhile I must apprentice the boy to some craft, which he can choose for himself. In my absence he will grow up and then we will see what to make of him. Kiss your good aunt good-bye, and let us try our luck elsewhere," concluded the doctor.
He had barely finished before Pitou rushed into his aunt's long, bony arms to exchange the hug which he wanted to be in token of eternal separation. But the mention of a sum of money and Gilbert's movements of putting his hand in his pocket for cash, with the chink of silver, set the warmth of greed up from her old heart.
"Lord, doctor, do not you know that nobody in all the wide world can love this poor lone, lorn thing like his own dear fond auntie?"
Entwining him with her long arms, she imprinted on his cheeks a couple of kisses so sour that they made his hair stand on end and then curl with a shriveling up.
"Just what I thought; but still you are too poor to do the proper thing."