He stopped to tell her that she was standing in the dirty stream.
"Take care; you are wetting your feet."
She took them out of the slush, and then observed:
"We are agreed about it, then?"
"Yes, we are agreed. Choose any time you like."
They did not even kiss each other, but just shook hands across the gate like a couple of friends. Then they went off in opposite directions.
When Françoise informed her aunt that same evening of her intention to marry Jean, explaining to her her need of a husband to assist her in recovering her property, La Grande at first made no reply. She sat stiffly in her chair with her eyes widely opened, calculating the loss and gain and pleasure which she was likely to derive from the marriage, and it was only the next day that she expressed her approval of it. She had been thinking the matter over all night long as she lay on her straw mattress, for she slept very little now, and would lie with open eyes till day dawned, plotting how she might make things disagreeable for the different members of her family. This marriage seemed to her to be so pregnant with unpleasant consequences for everybody, that she longed to see it come off with quite a youthful feverishness. She could already foresee even the smallest among the numerous vexations which would arise from it, and she was scheming how she might embitter them, and render them as fatal as possible. She was so pleased, indeed, that she told her niece that she would take the whole matter upon herself for affection's sake. She emphasised the word by a terrible shake of her stick. Since the others had cast the girl off, she would take the place of her mother, and folks would see how she managed matters.
As a first step, La Grande summoned her brother Fouan to talk to him about the accounts of the guardianship. The old man, however, could not give her any information. It wasn't his doing, he said, that he had been appointed guardian, and as Monsieur Baillehache had managed everything, he ought to be applied to. Moreover, when he discovered that the old woman was bent upon annoying the Buteaus, he affected still greater bewilderment. Age, and the consciousness of his weakness, filled him with uneasy alarm for himself; he felt that he was at everybody's mercy. Why should he quarrel with the Buteaus? He had twice almost made up his mind to return to them after nights of quaking fear, during which he had seen Hyacinthe and La Trouille ferreting about his room, and even thrusting their bare arms under his bolster, trying to rob him of his papers. He felt quite convinced that he would be murdered some night or other at the Château if he did not escape from it.
La Grande, being unable to glean anything from him, dismissed him in a state of great alarm, shouting out that he should be prosecuted if he had tampered with the girl's property. Then she attacked Delhomme, as a member of the family council, and gave him such a fright that he went home ill, Fanny coming at once to tell the old woman that they would prefer paying money down to being worried with law-suits. La Grande chuckled. The game was beginning to be very amusing!
The question she now set herself to solve was whether the division of the property should be pressed forward as the next step, or whether the marriage should take place first. She pondered over it for two nights, and pronounced in favour of an immediate marriage. Françoise, married to Jean and claiming her share of the property, assisted by her husband, would anger the Buteaus extremely. She then hurried things forward, seeming to regain the nimble activity of youth, and she busied herself about obtaining the necessary documents on behalf of Françoise, and made Jean give her his. Then she made all the arrangements both for the civil and religious weddings, and her eagerness even carried her so far that she advanced the necessary money, taking care, however, to obtain in exchange for it a receipt signed by both Jean and Françoise—a receipt in which the sum advanced was doubled by way of providing for the interest. The glasses of wine which she was forced to offer to the guests during the preparations wrenched her heart-strings more than anything else, but as she was provided with her vinegary liquid, her "gnat destroyer," folks were not pressing in this respect. She decided that there should be no wedding feast on account of the divided state of the family. After the mass they would merely just swallow a glass of the "gnat destroyer," by way of drinking the health of the newly-married pair.