"This means to take," answered the child, without raising her eyes.
"It means to steal, little fool; do you hear, to steal?"
"Yes, sister."
"And when one knows how to bone like Nicholas there is always something to gain. The linen he picked up yesterday has only cost us the trouble of picking out the marks—eh, mother?" said Calabash, with a burst of laughter which displayed her decayed teeth, as yellow as her skin. The widow did not laugh.
"Apropos of getting things gratis," continued Calabash, "we can, perhaps, furnish ourselves from another shop. You know that an old man, two or three days since, came to live in the country-house of M. Griffion, the physician of the Paris Hospital—the lonely house a few steps from the river, opposite the plaster quarry?" The widow bowed her head.
"Nicholas said yesterday that now there was, perhaps, a good job to be done there. And I know, since this morning, that there is some booty there for certain. I must send Amandine to wander around the house; they will pay no attention to her; she will pretend to be playing, will look well about her, and then come and let us know what she has seen. Do you hear what I say?"
"Yes, sister, I will go," answered the trembling child.
"You always say 'I will' but you never do it, you sly puss. The time I told you to take the five francs from the counter of the grocer at Asnieres, while I kept him busy at the other end of his shop—it was very easy; no one suspects a child—why didn't you obey?"
"Sister, my heart failed me: I did not dare."
"The other day you dared to steal a handkerchief from the peddler's pack while he was selling at the tavern. Did he find it out, fool?"