“Well, you know when it is all gone there is more left; don't be modest, for I shall not mind. The sooner it is finished the better pleased I shall be.”
Four days later he came again. The old woman was outside her door cutting up the bread for her soup.
He went up to her and put his face close to hers, so that he might smell her breath; and when he smelt the alcohol he felt pleased.
“I suppose you will give me a glass of the Special?” he said. And they had three glasses each.
Soon, however, it began to be whispered abroad that Mother Magloire was in the habit of getting drunk all by herself. She was picked up in her kitchen, then in her yard, then in the roads in the neighborhood, and she was often brought home like a log.
The innkeeper did not go near her any more, and, when people spoke to him about her, he used to say, putting on a distressed look:
“It is a great pity that she should have taken to drink at her age, but when people get old there is no remedy. It will be the death of her in the long run.”
And it certainly was the death of her. She died the next winter. About Christmas time she fell down, unconscious, in the snow, and was found dead the next morning.
And when Chicot came in for the farm, he said:
“It was very stupid of her; if she had not taken to drink she would probably have lived ten years longer.”