Every outbreak now ended in the same way.
"Off you go at once! Clear out with you!"
"Oh, yes, that's just what you'd like! Once I was foolish, and wanted to go away; whereas now you may kill me if you choose, but you won't get me to go. I shall stop here, and wait for what belongs to me. I want the land and the house, and I mean to have them, too; every inch and every stone!"
For the first few months Buteau's great fear had been that Françoise might prove to be with child. He had counted the days since he had caught her and Jean together among the corn, and he kept casting anxious, side-long glances at the girl, for the arrival of a baby would have spoilt everything by necessitating his sister-in-law's marriage. The girl herself was quite easy about the matter; but when she noticed the manifest interest that Buteau showed in her figure, she took a pleasure in puffing herself out, in order to deceive him. And whenever he seized hold of her, she always imagined that he was measuring her with his big fingers, the consequence of which was that she ended by saying to him, with a defiant air:
"Ah, there's one coming, and growing fast enough!"
One day she even folded up some towels and wrapped them round her. But in the evening there was almost a massacre. A feeling of terror now seized her at the murderous glances which her brother-in-law cast at her; she felt quite sure that if she had really been with child the brutal fellow would have struck her some foul blow in the hope of killing her. So she discontinued her acting.
"Go and get yourself a baby!" said Buteau one day to her, with a leer.
"If I haven't got one, it's because I don't choose," she replied, angrily, turning pale.
This was quite true. She obstinately rejected Jean's advances. Buteau, however, was none the less noisily triumphant, and he now began to abuse the girl's lover. A fine sort of a man he must be! he cried. Why, he must be rotten! He might be able to break people's arms by cowardly tricks, but he hadn't backbone enough about him to put a girl in the family-way! After that he began to overwhelm Françoise with sarcastic allusions to Jean, and indulged in filthy jokes about her own person.