"Oh, my friend! you are wounded! what a misfortune! But still I'm very happy that Bastringuette came and told me. She told me how it occurred, too. A horrid drunken man pushed you and knocked you down; she happened to be passing and saw you lying on the ground, unconscious, and had you brought here to her room. She's a dear, good girl, and she loves you almost as much as I do. I should have been so anxious, so unhappy, when I didn't see you! I should have thought again that you had stopped loving me. But now I'll come and see you every day; yes, monsieur, every day; in the morning when I go to my work, and at night before I go home to my aunt's.--What is it, monsieur? don't you want me to?" "If your aunt should find it out," Paul murmured, "she would scold you, and I don't want to expose you to----" "What an extraordinary man!" cried Bastringuette; "he's willing to be loved, but he don't want anybody to do anything for him. Bless my soul! mademoiselle will get up a little earlier and go home a little later--what a hardship! She'll tire herself, perhaps, to get here a little sooner; but she'll see you, and that'll do you good and her too." "Oh! yes, my dear," said Elina, "let me spend every minute I am at liberty with you; let me help Bastringuette; I shall be so happy when I see you getting better every day! and the first time you go out, you will lean on her and me. Oh! you shall see how I can take care of you, too; I look like a light-headed little thing, but I won't be that any more; I mean that you shall be satisfied with me." The young invalid felt the tears roll down his cheeks when he saw how fond they were of him; and he was so moved to find himself the object of such sweet and loving attentions, that he could not speak; but he looked from one to the other of the girls who stood beside his bed, and his eyes probably told them all that was taking place in his heart, for Bastringuette exclaimed, with her customary bluntness: "Oh, well! if we're going to be sentimental, and all three of us cry, we shall make a pretty mess of it; it'll give him the fever, and he won't get well. The doctor said he mustn't be excited, and we've done nothing else!" Elina sat down beside the bed, took one of the injured man's hands in hers, and said to him in a low, very low tone: "Does it do you any harm to see how much I love you? More's the pity if it does; I'll tell you every day. And if my aunt should find out that I come to see you, why, I'll say: 'Paul is going to be my husband, aunt; and a woman has a right to nurse her husband.'" While the little dressmaker said to her lover all that her heart prompted her to say, Bastringuette went to one of her neighbors and borrowed a wretched mattress, which she carried into her closet; then she threw some old clothes on it, and said to herself: "I shall sleep well enough there; anyway, a nurse can't sleep much." Elina, having to return to her aunt, left them with regret, saying: "Until to-morrow!"