“Very well,” agreed Madame Foucault, apparently reluctant.
“Now, how much must I pay you per week?”
“I don’t want anything—I don’t want anything! You are a friend of Chirac’s. You——”
“Not at all!” Sophia interrupted, tapping her foot and biting her lip. “Naturally I must pay.”
Madame Foucault wept quietly.
“Shall I pay you seventy-five francs a week?” said Sophia, anxious to end the matter.
“It is too much!” Madame Foucault protested, insincerely.
“What? For all you have done for me?”
“I speak not of that,” Madame Foucault modestly replied.
If the devotion was not to be paid for, then seventy-five francs a week was assuredly too much, as during more than half the time Sophia had had almost no food. Madame Foucault was therefore within the truth when she again protested, at sight of the bank-notes which Sophia brought from her trunk: