This time, however, it was a more serious matter. Drawn up in a line, they pierced the Cotentine cow through and through with their keen, concentrated gaze. On her side, also, the woman who wished to sell it had said nothing, and her glance was elsewhere, as if she had not seen them come back and draw up in line.
At last Fanny bent down and whispered a brief remark to Lise about the animal. Old Rose and Françoise also exchanged impressions in a whisper. Then they relapsed into silence and immobility, and the scrutiny was continued.
"How much?" Lise suddenly asked.
"Four hundred francs," replied the peasant woman.
They affected to be driven away by this, and as they were looking for Jean they were surprised to find him behind them with Buteau, the two chatting together like old friends. Buteau had come from La Chamade to buy a porker, and was negotiating for one on the spot. The pigs, which were in a movable pen at the back-end of the vehicle that had brought them, were biting one another and deafening the air with their squeals.
"Will you take twenty francs?" asked Buteau.
"No; thirty!"
"Fiddle! Go to bed with 'em!"
Bluff and merry, he went up to the women; accosting his mother, his sister, and his two cousins just as radiantly as if he had only left them on the previous day. They also were undisturbed, and seemed to have forgotten the two years of bickering and ill-feeling. The mother alone, who had been apprised of the first encounter in the Rue Grouaise, watched him out of her puckered eyes; trying to gather why he had been to the notary's. But of this there was no indication on his face, and neither of them said a word on the subject.
"So, cousin," he went on, "you're after buying a cow? Jean told me. Well, there's one over there, something like an animal! The sturdiest in the market!"