Page:Malot - Nobodys Boy, Crewe-Jones, 1916.djvu/174

 of sugar stick. He took advantage of this and coughed every moment in order to get the remedy that he liked so much, and this remedy instead of curing him made him worse.

When I found out this trick I naturally stopped giving him the candy, but he was not discouraged. First he begged for it with an appealing look; then when he saw that I would not give it to him, he sat up in his seat and bent his little body with his hand on his stomach, and coughed with all his might. The veins in his forehead stood out, the tears ran from his eyes, and his pretense at choking, in the end, turned to a dreadful attack over which he had no control.

I had to stay at the inn with Pretty-Heart while my master went out alone. One morning upon his return he told me that the landlady had demanded the sum that we owed her. This was the first time that he had ever spoken to me about money. It was quite by chance that I had learned that he had sold his watch to buy my sheepskin. Now he told me that he had only fifty sous left. The only thing to do, he said, was to give a performance that same day. A performance without Zerbino, Dulcie or Pretty-Heart; why, that seemed to me impossible!

"We must get forty francs at once," he said. "Pretty-Heart must be looked after. We must have a fire in the room, and medicine, and the landlady must be paid. If we pay her what we owe her, she will give us another credit."