"There is something worse than suffering," said my uncle,—"there is shame; and that recoils upon the children."
Mariton sighed.
"Yes," she said, "a woman is exposed to daily insults in a house of that kind. She must always be on the look-out to defend herself. If she gets angry, that injures the custom, and her masters don't like it."
"Some of them," said the old man, "try to find handsome and good-humored women like you to help sell their liquors; a saucy maid is often all an inn-keeper needs to do a better business than his neighbors."
"I know that," said Mariton; "but a woman can be gay and lively, and quick to serve the guests, without allowing herself to be insulted."
"Bad language is always insulting," said Père Brulet; "and it ought to cost an honest woman dear to get accustomed to such ways. Think how mortified your son will be when he hears the carters and the bagmen joking with his mother."
"Luckily he's simple," said Mariton, looking at Joseph.
I looked at him too, and I was surprised that he did not hear a word of what his mother was saying in a voice loud enough for me to catch every word. I gathered from that that he was "hearing thick," as we said in those days, meaning one who was hard of hearing.
Joseph got up presently and went after Brulette, who was in her little goat-pen, which was nothing more than a shed made of planks stuffed with straw, where she kept about a dozen animals.
He flung himself on a pile of brushwood; and having followed him (for fear of being thought inquisitive if I stayed behind), I saw that he was crying inside of him, though there were no tears in his eyes.