She started out of her sleep.
"Dear, yes! we shall be better abed. Till we meet again, Jean!"
"Till we meet again, Françoise!"
[PART III.]
CHAPTER I.
So at last Buteau had got his share, that land he had so ardently coveted, and yet refused during more than two years and a half, in a fury compounded of longing, rancour, and obstinacy. He himself did not know why he had been so stubborn, yearning at heart to sign the deed, fearing he might be tricked, and unable to console himself for not having secured the whole inheritance, the nineteen acres now mutilated and scattered. Since his acceptance, however, a great passion had been satisfied, the brutal joy of possession; and that joy was doubled by the thought that his sister and brother were now the swindled parties, that his holding was worth more since the new road ran by his field. He never met them without a sly chuckle, and winks that said:
"All the same, I've taken them in!"
And that was not all. He triumphed also by his long-deferred marriage, by the five acres adjoining his own field which Lise had brought him. The thought that the sisters' property must be divided did not occur to him; or, if it did, he looked upon it as something so far distant that he hoped in the interval to hit upon some scheme of evasion. Counting Françoise's share, he had eight acres of plough land, eight of meadow, and about five of vineyard, and he would stick to them. He would part with his skin first. Above all, he would never let any one cut up the piece of ground which bordered the road, and that now comprised nearly six acres. Neither his sister nor his brother had a field like it. He talked of it in inflated terms, bursting with pride. A year passed by, and this first year of possession was bliss to Buteau. Never when he had hired himself out to others had he ploughed so deeply into the bowels of the earth. It was his; he wanted to penetrate and fructify its inmost parts. At night he used to come in exhausted, with his plough-share gleaming like silver. In March he harrowed his wheat; in April his oats; taking minute care, and throwing himself heart and soul into the task. When all the work in the fields was done, he returned to them just the same; lover-like, to gaze at them. He walked round, stooping and picking up handfuls of soil with his old gesture; delighting to crush the rich clods, and let them filter through his fingers; and feeling supremely happy if he found them neither too dry nor too damp, with a fine smell suggestive of growing bread.