pleasing people. No doubt she fancied she could detect a flush of
displeasure mounting to her benefactress's brow, for her huge,
puffed-up face, all eagerness and excitement, suddenly clouded over;
and she resumed, in stammering accents:

"I am always asleep. Perhaps I have been poisoned. A woman in the Rue
de l'Annonciation was killed by a drug which the chemist gave her in
mistake for another."

That day Helene lingered for nearly half an hour in Mother Fetu's
room, hearing her talk of Normandy, where she had been born, and where
the milk was so good. During a silence she asked the old woman
carelessly: "Have you known the doctor a long time?"

Mother Fetu, lying on her back, half-opened her eyes and again closed
them.

"Oh, yes!" she answered, almost in a whisper. "For instance, his
father attended to me before '48, and he accompanied him then."

"I have been told the father was a very good man."

"Yes, but a little cracked. The son is much his superior. When he
touches you you would think his hands were of velvet."

Silence again fell.

"I advise you to do everything he tells you," at last said Helene. "He
is very clever; he saved my daughter."