"Aren't you thirsty?"
"Yes."
Françoise took a deep draught from the bottle without repugnance. While she bent backward, with her loins curved, and her rounded bust straining the thin material of her dress, he looked at her askance. She also was dripping with moisture, in a print dress half undone, the body being unhooked at the top and showing her white flesh. Under the blue handkerchief with which she had covered her head and neck, her eyes seemed very large in her quiet face, glowing with the heat.
Without another word Buteau, with his hips swinging, resumed his work, felling a swath with every stroke of his scythe, the swish of which kept time to his tread. Stooping down again, she followed him, carrying in her right hand her sickle, which she made use of to gather up each armful of corn from among the thistles. At every three steps she laid the wheat regularly in bundles. Whenever he straightened himself, just long enough to pass the back of his hand over his brow, and saw Françoise too far in the rear, stooping, with her head quite close to the ground, in the position of an expectant animal, he called out to her in a husky voice, his tongue seemingly getting drier than ever:
"Now, then, lazybones! You ought to know better than to fool away your time like that!"
In the adjacent field, where for three days the straw of the bundles had been drying, Palmyre was engaged in binding the sheaves. He did not watch her; for, contrary to the usual practice, he had arranged to pay her per hundred sheaves, on the pretext that she was old and worn out, and had lost her strength, so that he should lose if he paid her by time—at the rate of a franc and a-half per day, which was what the younger women earned. Even to secure this piecework she had had to implore him; and he had taken advantage of her position, assuming the resigned air of a Christian performing a work of charity. The poor creature collected three or four bundles—as many as her shrivelled arms could hold—and then tightly tied the sheaf with a band she had prepared. This work, so fatiguing that it is usually reserved for the men, was exhausting her. Her breast was crushed by the constant loads it had to sustain; her arms were strained by dint of embracing such massive bundles, and tugging at the bands of straw. She had brought with her in the morning a bottle, which she went and filled every hour or so at a neighbouring stagnant, poisonous pool; and she drank greedily of the water, in spite of the diarrhœa, which had torn her to pieces since the beginning of the hot weather, her health being already ruined by over-work.
The azure of the sky had grown pale, as if it were whitened by the heat; and burning coals seemed to fall from the sun, now glowing more fiercely than ever. It was the oppressive noontide hour of the siesta. Delhomme and his party, who had been stacking some sheaves near by—four below, and one to roof the others in with—had already disappeared, and were all lying down in some hollow. For an instant longer old Fouan could be seen, still standing up. He had sold his house a fortnight previously, since when he had been living with his son-in-law, following the harvest-work with all the feverishness of yore. In his turn, he soon felt obliged to lie down, and also disappeared from view. There was nothing remaining against the blank horizon, or the blazing background of the stubble, save the withered figure of La Grande, who was examining a tall stack which her people had begun to erect among a little tribe of smaller ones already partially pulled to pieces. She seemed like a tree hardened by age, with nothing to fear from the sun, as, without a drop of perspiration on her, she stood there bolt upright, feeling sternly indignant with the sleepers.
"Pish! My skin's absolutely crackling," said Buteau at last.
And, turning to Françoise:
"Let's sleep a bit!"