If I had dared I would have said that only the night before Barberin had reproached me for seeming delicate and having thin arms and legs, but I felt that I should gain nothing by it but an angry word, so I kept silent.
For a long time they wrangled over my good and bad points.
"Well, such as he is," said the old man at last, "I'll take him, but mind you, I don't buy him outright. I'll hire him. I'll give you twenty francs a year for him."
"Twenty francs!"
"That's a good sum, and I'll pay in advance."
"But if I keep him the town will pay me more than ten francs a month."
"I know what you'd get from the town, and besides you've got to feed him."
"He will work."
"If you thought that he could work you wouldn't be so anxious to get rid of him. It is not for the money that's paid for their keep that you people take in lost children, it's for the work that you can get out of them. You make servants of them, they pay you and they themselves get no wages. If this child could have done much for you, you would have kept him."