At length Lise ventured on the subject of her visit.
"Uncle, they tell me that the other day you had a talk with Buteau."
"Buteau is a thorough beast!" cried Fouan, suddenly infuriated, and not giving her time to finish. "If he wasn't as pig-headed as a carroty-haired donkey, should I ever have had that bother with Fanny?"
This first disagreement with his children he had so far kept to himself, but, in his bitterness of heart, the allusion had now escaped him.
On entrusting Delhomme with Buteau's share, he had intended to rent it out at eighty francs a hectare, while Delhomme purposed simply paying a double allowance: two hundred francs for his own share, and two hundred for the other. That was fair, and the old man was the more angry because he had been in the wrong.
"What bother?" asked Lise. "Don't the Delhommes pay you?"
"Oh, yes!" replied Rose. "Every three months, at the stroke of twelve, the money is there on the table. Only there are ways and ways of paying, aren't there? And my old man, being sensitive, would like people to behave at least decently. Whereas, since this worry about Buteau's share, Fanny comes to us with the same air as she would go to the process-server, as if she were being cheated."
"Yes," added the old man, "they do pay, and that's about all. I don't think that enough. There's a certain consideration due. Their money don't pay off everything, does it? We're mere creditors now, nothing more. And yet we're wrong to grumble. If they'd all of them pay."
He broke off, and an awkward silence fell. This allusion to Hyacinthe, who hadn't handed in a copper, but was mortgaging his share bit by bit, and getting drunk on the proceeds, wrung the heart of his mother, who was always impelled to defend that darling scamp of hers. She dreaded lest this other sore point should be laid bare, and so she hastily resumed:
"Don't go fretting yourself about trifles! What's the odds so long as we're happy? Enough's as good as a feast."