"Come," asked the daughter, "shall we let it go at five hundred and fifty?"
"Right you are!" answered he. "The old 'uns must have a little pleasant time!"
The mother turned to her elder son with a smiling and yet almost tearful look of affection, while the father continued his contention with the younger. He had only given way step by step, disputing every reduction, and making a stubborn stand on certain items. But, beneath his ostensibly cool pertinacity, his wrath rose high within him as he confronted the mad desire of his own flesh and blood to fatten on his flesh, and to drain his blood dry while he was yet alive. He forgot that he had thus fed upon his own father. His hands had begun to tremble; and he growled out:
"Ah, the rascals! To think that one has brought 'em up, and then they turn round and take the bread out of one's mouth! On my word, I'm sick of it. I'd rather be already rotting under ground. So there's no getting you to behave decently; you won't give more than five hundred and fifty?"
He was about to accept the sum, when his wife again twitched his blouse and whispered:
"No, no!"
"And that's not all," resumed Buteau, after a little hesitation. "How about the money you have saved up? If you've any money of your own you don't want ours, do you?"
He looked steadily at his father, having reserved this shot for the last. The old man had grown very pale.
"What money?" he asked.