“Kill a man!” She showed her white teeth with a savage little smile.
“Of course it is all guess. I asked Farette what he would shoot, and he said, ‘Nothing good to eat.’ I said I would eat what he killed. Then he got pretty mad, and said I couldn’t eat my own head. Holy! that was funny for Farette. Then I told him there was no good going to the Bois Noir, for there would be nothing to shoot. Well, did I speak true, Madame Julie?”
She was conscious of something new in Parpon. She could not define it. Presently she got to her feet and said: “I don’t believe you—you’re a monkey.”
“A monkey can climb a tree quick; a man has to take the shot as it comes.” He stretched up his powerful arms, with a swift motion as of climbing, laughed, and added: “Madame Julie, Farette has poor eyes; he could not see a hole in a ladder. But he has a kink in his head about the Bois Noir. People have talked—”
“Pshaw!” Julie said, crumpling her apron and throwing it out; “he is a child and a coward. He should not play with a gun; it might go off and hit him.”
Parpon hopped down and trotted to the door. Then he turned and said, with a sly gurgle: “Farette keeps at that gun. What is the good! There will be nobody at the Bois Noir any more. I will go and tell him.”
She rushed at him with fury, but seeing Annette Benoit in the road, she stood still and beat her foot angrily on the doorstep. She was ripe for a quarrel, and she would say something hateful to Annette; for she never forgot that Farette had asked Annette to be his wife before herself was considered. She smoothed out her wrinkled apron and waited.
“Good day, Annette,” she said loftily.
“Good day, Julie,” was the quiet reply.
“Will you come in?”