“Oh no—not that! I want an understanding about wages.”
To Louis the dread crisis had come. He turned a little green, for he was very miserly-for the love of God.
He had scarcely realised what was happening when Charley first sat down on the bench beside him. He had been taken by surprise. Apart from the excitement of the new experience, he had profited by the curiosity of the public, for he had orders enough to keep him busy until summer, and he had had to give out work to two extra women in the parish, though he had never before had more than one working for him. But his ruling passion was strong in him. He always remembered with satisfaction that once when the Cure was absent and he was supposed to be dying, a priest from another parish came, and, the ministrations over, he had made an offering of a gold piece. When the young priest hesitated, his fingers had crept back to the gold piece, closed on it, and drawn it back beneath the coverlet again. He had then peacefully fallen asleep. It was a gracious memory.
“I don’t need much, I don’t want a great deal,” continued Charley when the tailor did not answer, “but I have to pay for my bed and board, and I can’t do it on nothing.”
“How have you done it so far?” peevishly replied the tailor.
“By working after hours at carpentering up there”—he made a gesture towards Vadrome Mountain. “But I can’t go on doing that all the time, or I’ll be like you too soon.”
“Be like me!” The voice of the tailor rose shrilly.
“Be like me! What’s the matter with me?”
“Only that you’re in a bad way before your time, and that you mayn’t get out of this hole without stepping into another. You work too hard, Monsieur Trudel.”
“What do you want—wages?”