"Oh, in October. Plenty of time yet; there's no hurry."
She struggled against her desire to question him about his sister, but she spoke of her despite herself.
"Is it true what they say, that Suzanne is now at Chartres?"
He, completely indifferent, made answer:
"I suppose so! She seems to enjoy it."
Then, in the distance, seeing Lequeu, the schoolmaster, who was seemingly strolling down by chance, he resumed:
"Hullo! There's somebody after the Macqueron girl. What did I tell you? He's stopping and poking his face into her hair. Get along with you, you old nincompoop! You may sniff round her, but you'll never get anything but the smell!"
Françoise began laughing again, and Victor pursued the family vendetta by falling foul of Berthe. No doubt the schoolmaster wasn't worth much: a bully who cuffed children, a sly-boots whose opinions nobody knew, capable of toadying the girl to get her father's money. But, then, Berthe was no better than she should be, with all her fine town-bred airs. It was no use her wearing flounced skirts and velvet bodices, and stuffing out her behind with table-napkins; the underneath was none the better. Quite the reverse, indeed, for she was up to snuff; she'd learnt more by being brought up at the Châteaudun school than by stopping at home to mind the cows. No fear of her getting herself let in for a child; she preferred to ruin her constitution in solitude.
"How do you mean?" asked Françoise, who did not understand.
He made a gesture, whereupon she became serious, and said, unreservedly: