“It is well, my mother,” he said, at last. “Forget that I have said any thing, and act according to your own judgment. We know that women are always right.”
Dolores breathed more freely.
“How good he is!” she said joyously to her mother-in-law.
“Could you doubt it?” she replied, smiling, to her daughter, whom she tenderly loved; and in rising to go and take her place at the couch of the invalid, she added:
“I have never doubted it, I who brought him into the world.”
And in passing near to Momo, she said to him:
“I already knew that you had a bad heart; but you have never proved it as you have to-day. I complain of you: you are wicked, and the wicked carry their own chastisement.”
“Old people are only good for sermonizing,” growled Momo, in casting a side look at his grandmother.
But he had scarcely pronounced this last word, when his mother, who had heard him, approached and applied a smart blow.
“That will teach you,” she said, “to be insolent to the mother of your father; towards a woman who is twice your mother.”