He still used the second person singular, treating her as a little urchin, so slight was she for her fourteen years of age. She, raising her chin, looked seriously at the big, ruddy, crop-haired, full-faced, regular-featured young fellow, whose twenty-nine years made him in her eyes an old man.
"Hullo! I know you. You are Corporal, the carpenter who stopped as farm-hand with Monsieur Hourdequin."
Hearing the nickname, which the peasants had given him, the young fellow smiled; and he contemplated her in turn, surprised to find her almost a woman so soon, with her little bust firm and taking shape, her oval face, her deep, black eyes; and full lips, fresh and rosy as ripening fruit. She was clad in a grey skirt and black woollen bodice; on her head there was a round cap; and she had a very dark skin, scorched and burnished by the sun.
"Why, thou'rt old Mouche's youngest!" cried he. "I didn't call thee to mind. Isn't that so? Thy sister was keeping company with Buteau last spring, when he worked with me at La Borderie?"
She replied simply:
"Yes, I'm Françoise. My sister Lise went with cousin Buteau, and is now six months with child. He's bolted; he's down Orgères way, at the farm of La Chamade."
"That's it," concluded Jean; "I have seen them together."
And they remained an instant mute, face to face; he smiling at having one evening surprised the two lovers behind a mill, she still sucking her bruised wrist, as if the moisture of her lips allayed its smarting; whilst, in an adjoining field, the cow quietly plucked tufts of lucern. The waggoner and the harrow had gone off by a roundabout way, to reach the road. Two ravens, which kept wheeling round and round the steeple, were heard to caw. The three notes of the angelus rang through the still air.
"Hullo! Twelve o'clock already!" cried Jean. "Let's make haste!"
Then, noticing La Coliche in the field: "Eh, but thy cow is doing damage! Suppose any one saw her! Wait a bit, I'll make it lively for her!"