"Sweat dries and doesn't soil," interposed La Grande, curtly.
Monsieur Baillehache again intervened. He told them that a debtor and creditor account would have to be drawn up, the wages on one side and the board and lodging and other expenses on the other. Then he took a pen, and made an attempt to draw up a statement from the information they gave him. It was a terrible business. Françoise, backed up by La Grande, showed herself very exacting, setting a high price upon her services, and detailing at length all that she had done while she was with the Buteaus: her work in the household, and with the cows, and out in the fields, where her brother-in-law had made her labour like a man. The exasperated Buteaus, on the other hand, swelled out the list of expenses as much as possible, counting up every meal, telling lies about the girl's clothes, and claiming even the money which had been spent in presents for her on fête-days. But, despite all they could do, they found themselves with a balance of a hundred and eighty-six francs against them. Their hands trembled and their eyes blazed as they tried to think of something else that they might charge for.
The statement was about to be passed when Buteau suddenly cried out:
"Stop a moment. There's the doctor. He came twice when she was out of sorts; that makes another six francs."
La Grande was by no means inclined to let the others enjoy this victory undisturbed, and she stirred up old Fouan to make him recollect how many days' work the girl had done on the farm while he was living in the house. Was it five days or six, at a franc and a half the day? Françoise cried six, and Lise cried five, hurling the words at each other's heads as though they had been stones. The distracted old man now supported one and then the other, tapping his forehead with his fists. Françoise, however, carried the day, and there was now a balance to her credit of a hundred and eighty-nine francs.
"Well, is everything included now?" asked the notary.
Buteau seemed quite crushed and overwhelmed with this ever-increasing liability, and no longer struggling, he sat there hoping that affairs had now seen their worst.
"I'll take off my shirt if they want it," he groaned in a doleful voice.
La Grande, however, had kept a last terrible bolt in reserve. It was a very important and simple matter, which everybody seemed to have forgotten.