Next day he applied himself to the new accomplishment and had to acknowledge that tuition is agreeable according to the tutor. In two hours he had a very good idea of the art.
"Ah, if you had taught me Latin, I don't believe I should have made so many mistakes," he sighed.
"But then you would be a priest and be shut up in an ugly old monastery where no women are allowed."
"That's so; well, I am not sorry I am not to be a priest."
At breakfast Billet reminded his new man that the reading of the Gilbert pamphlet was to take place in the barn at ten a.m. next day. That was the hour for mass, Pitou objected.
"Just why I pitch on it, to test my lads," replied the farmer.
Billet detested religious leaders as the apostles of tyranny, and seized the opportunity of setting up one altar against another.
His wife and daughter raising some remonstrance, he said that church was good enough for womanfolks, no doubt, and they might go and sleep away their time there; but it suited men to hear stronger stuff, or else the men should not work on his land.
Billet was a despot in his house; only Catherine ever coped with him and she was hushed when he frowned.
But she thought to gain something for Pitou on the occasion. She pointed out that the doctrines might suffer by the mouthpiece; that the reader was too shabby for the phrases to make a mark. So Pitou was agreeably surprised when Sunday morning came round to see the tailor enter while he was ruminating how he could "clean up," and lay on a chair a coat and breeches of sky blue cloth and a long waistcoat of white and pink stripes. At the same time a housemaid came in to put on another chair opposite the first, a shirt and a neckcloth; if the former fitted, she was to make half-a-dozen.