When we got to her house, she showed me with pride the room she had arranged for me behind the shop, all warm and comfortable and directly under her eye, as if I were a child of a year old. I was touched to see how the dear girl had made up the bed with her best linen sheets and comforter, and had put a nosegay on the table; it made me laugh too when I thought how furious she would be. “This won’t do at all,” said I, so though vexed enough she showed me the other rooms downstairs, but I would have none of them, and finally chose a little nook under the mansarded roof. In spite of everything she could say, I declared that she might take it or leave it, that if she would not let me have the room I liked, I would go back to my hut, so she had to give in, but every day and all day long she kept at me about it. “That’s not a fit place for you, Father, the other room is much more comfortable,--why in the world don’t you like it?” “Because I don’t,” I would say and then she would go into a rage, and swear that I would drive her crazy, that she knew why I behaved so, it was just because I was too stuffy and proud to be beholden to any of my children, even to her. “I should like to box your ears!” she would cry, and then I would tell her that would be the only way to make me accept something from her gratis. “You don’t love me, Daddy.” “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.” “Well, then, you see! Now give me a kiss for good-night.” She did kiss me but I could hear her muttering to herself that it was hard luck for her to have two such wooden heads in one family. “Well, pound the other one as much as you please, but leave me in peace.”