"Yes, but look at her running away, down the lane."
Aunt Angelique was making a mistake: Catherine was not running away and she took the sideway simply because she was in haste to see her mother.
At the cry the children scampered after her, and as she was fond of them always, and more than ever at present, she gave them some small change with which they returned.
"What is that?" asked the gossips.
"It is Miss Catherine; she asked how her mother was and when we said the doctor says she is good for a week yet, she thanked us and gave us some money."
"Hem! then, she seems to have taken her pigs to a good market in Paris," sneered Angelique, "to be able to give silver to the urchins who run at her heels."
She did not like Catherine because the latter was young and sweet and Angelique was old and sour; Catherine was tall and well made while the other was short and limped. Besides, when Angelique turned her nephew Ange out of doors, it was on Billet's farm that he took refuge.
Again, it was Billet who had lugged Father Fortier out of his rectory to say the mass for the country on the day of the Declaration of the Rights of Man.
All these were ample reasons for Angelique to hate Catherine, joined to her natural asperity, in particular, and the Billet's in general. And when she hated it was thorough, as becomes a prude and a devotee.
She ran to the priest's to tell him and his sister the fresh scandal of Billet's daughter returning home with her child.