“I have bad news to tell you,” said Madame Bayard, sticking her pen in a cup of leaden shot, when her husband had entered the glass cage. “Poor Voisin is dead.”
“The nurse of Leon? Poor woman! And her little daughter?”
“That is the saddest part, my dear. A relative of poor Voisin writes me that they are too poor to take charge of the child, and she must be sent to an orphan asylum.”
“Oh, those peasants!”
The druggist was silent for a moment, rubbing his thick blond beard; then suddenly looking at his wife with kindly eyes:
“Say, Mimi, the child is the foster sister of our Leon. Suppose we give her a home?”
“I should think so,” was the quiet reply of the pretty wife.
“Well done,” cried Bayard, as, caring little if he were seen by his clerks and store-boys, he leaned towards his wife and kissed her forehead, “well done! you’re a good woman, Mimi. We will take little Norine with us, and bring her up with Leon. That won’t ruin us, eh? Besides, I have just made a good stroke in quinine. We will go after the child Sunday to Argenteuil, sha’n’t we?”
“We will make that our Sunday excursion.”