“Everybody, my dear. The husband is very eccentric, certainly, but he is an artist, or a journalist rather, and they are privileged. The woman is not quite a lady, I admit, but she is well enough. I will answer for their respectability.”
Madame Rivals shook her head. She had but slight confidence in her husband’s insight into character, and sighed in an ostentatious way.
Old Rivals colored guiltily, but returned in a moment to his original idea.
“The child will be ill if she has not some change. Besides, what harm could possibly happen?”
The grandmother then consented, and Jack and Cécile became close companions. The old lady grew very fond of the little fellow. She saw that he was neglected at home, that the buttons were off his coat, and that he had no lesson-hours.
“Do you not go to school, my dear?”
“No, madame,” was the answer; and then quickly added,—for a child’s instinct is very delicate,—“Mamma teaches me.”
“I cannot understand,” said Madame Rivals to her husband, “how they can let this child grow up in this way, idling his time from morning till night.”
“The child is not very clever,” answered the doctor, anxious to excuse his friends.
“No, it is not that; it is that his stepfather does not like him.”