"And your godmother, my child,—it seems to me she must be a great trial to you."
"When one suffers all the time, and has never had anything but misfortunes all one's life, it is very natural that one should not be very sweet tempered."
"Your godmother is an invalid, then?"
"She has lost one of her hands, monsieur, and she has a lung trouble that has confined her to the bed for more than a year."
"Lost her hand,—how?"
"She used to work in a mattress factory, monsieur, and one day she ran a long, crooked needle into her hand. The wound became inflamed from want of care, for my godmother had not time to give it the attention it should have had, and the doctors were obliged to cut her arm off. The wound reopens now and then, and causes her a great deal of pain."
"Poor woman!" murmured the scrivener, absently.
"As for the lung trouble she has," continued Mariette, "many women who follow that trade contract the disease, the doctors say, from breathing the unwholesome dust from the old mattresses they make over. My godmother is bent almost double, and nearly every night she has such terrible fits of coughing that I have to hold her for hours, sometimes."
"And your godmother has nothing but your earnings to depend on?"
"She cannot work now, monsieur, of course."