"You are acting shamefully!" she cried. "I told you so before. You don't seem to have any feelings! However, I can tell you this, unless you make a change, you may lie in your hole by yourself. I shall have myself taken somewhere else, for I'll never consent to let my bones be poisoned by that drab there!"
As she spoke she jerked her chin in the direction of Flore; but the latter was not going to submit to this abuse.
"You'd be no very pleasant neighbour yourself!" she retorted, in a drawling, whining tone. "Make yourself quite easy, my dear; I don't intend to let your bones give the disease to mine."
"Eh, what? What disease?"
"Oh, you know what disease very well!"
La Bécu and La Frimat were now obliged to interpose and separate the two women.
"Come, come," urged the former, "you won't lie together since you are both of the same way of thinking. Every one is at liberty to choose her own company."
La Frimat expressed her acquiescence in this.
"It's only natural," she said. "I'm sure that when my old man's time comes I'd rather keep him in the house with me than let him lie alongside of old Couillot, with whom he had differences once on a time."
The tears welled to her eyes as she thought that her paralytic husband would probably pass away before the week was over. She had fallen with him on the previous evening as she was trying to put him to bed, and whenever he departed she wouldn't be long in following him.