He fought the typhoid day and night--if you knew my father! Well, there was a bad case in a family named Rossignol: a boy of twelve.

What made it worse was that two elder brothers had been killed in the war, and the parents sat in despair by the bedside of their only remaining child.

The father was old and very shaky; the mother much younger, but she had suffered dreadfully from the death of her two boys--you should hear my father tell it! I make a hash of it; when _he_ tells it people cry.

Madame Rossignol was the sweetest little woman--you know that kind of Frenchwoman, don't you?
Soft-voiced, tender, intelligent, using the most delightful phrases; a jewel of a woman.

My father settled himself by the bedside and fought; Madame Rossignol watching him with eyes he did not dare to meet--until a certain moment.