The husband awoke at the first streaks of dawn. His father-in-law was still alive. He shook his wife, worried by the tenacity of the old man.
“Say, Phemie, he don’t want to quit. What would you do?”
He knew that she gave good advice.
She answered:
“You needn’t be afraid; he can’t live through the day. And the mayor won’t stop our burying him to-morrow, because he allowed it for Maitre Renard’s father, who died just during the planting season.”
He was convinced by this argument, and left for the fields.
His wife baked the dumplings and then attended to her housework.
At noon the old man was not dead. The people hired for the day’s work came by groups to look at him. Each one had his say. Then they left again for the fields.
At six o’clock, when the work was over, the father was still breathing. At last his son-in-law was frightened.
“What would you do now, Phemie?”