“Yes, my girl.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I owe twenty-five francs, and they may wring my neck twenty-five times before I can pay them.”
“Well, I know how you can get five hundred,” she said in his ear.
“Oh! by killing a man; but I prefer to live.”
“Hold your tongue. Vaudoyer will give us five hundred francs if you will let him catch your mother at a tree.”
“I’d rather kill a man than sell my mother. There’s your old grandmother; why don’t you sell her?”
“If I tried to, my father would get angry and stop the trick.”
“That’s true. Well, anyhow, my mother sha’n’t go to prison, poor old thing! She cooks my food and keeps me in clothes, I’m sure I don’t know how. Go to prison,—and through me! I shouldn’t have any bowels within me; no, no! And for fear any one else should sell her, I’ll tell her this very night not to kill any more trees.”
“Well, my father may say and do what he likes, but I shall tell him there are five hundred francs to be had, and perhaps he’ll ask my grandmother if she’ll earn them. They’ll never put an old woman seventy-eight years of age in prison,—though, to be sure, she’d be better off there than in her garret.”