“Now, my little girl, my own sweet baby!”
“Let me alone! Don’t you dare to touch me! You can’t make up to me like that, old fraud that you are! And all the time you are just laughing at me. I can see your mouth twitching.”
“You’re laughing yourself, Martine,” and I put my finger on her cheek, which broke into a smile.
“All the same, I am really angry,” said she, “even if you do make me laugh with your nonsense, but in my heart I think you are a horrid old thing! You have lost your house and you are too stuck-up to let your daughter help you; it is nothing but wicked pride, and you have no right to behave so!”
“It is the only right that is left to me,” said I.
But that did not end the matter and there was never any lack of sharp words between two people like us, who both of us had a fine edge to our tongues; but, luckily, a joke could always make us laugh in the midst of our discussions and so the storm would blow over.
One evening when her tongue had been going like a clapper, and I had long ceased to listen, I told her at last it was time to stop, and wait for the rest till the next day.
“Very well then,” she said. “Good-night! But won’t you change your mind, old Peacock?”
“Listen, dear, I am proud as a peacock, if you choose to say so, but, frankly now, in my place what would you do?”
“Pretty much the same thing.”