"Oh! that don't make any difference," rejoined the farmer's wife; "dresses can be let down and pieced out; we ain't ladies, you know. How much will madame pay my niece to do her work?"
"Tell me yourself what you think it will be worth."
"Bless me! if the girl has her lodging and keep and washing, it seems to me that if you give her a ten-franc piece every month she'll be satisfied. Do you think that's too much?"
"No, it's not too much; and I promise you to increase her wages if she serves me faithfully."
"Then it's all fixed, unless Poucette don't want to go into service; but if she don't want to, why, we wouldn't like to vex the child. She'd think we was doing it to get rid of her; she'd think we didn't love her any more; and that would make her unhappy, and us too!"
"Poor people!" said Honorine, looking at Agathe, "how devoted they are to one another! Their hearts are rich at all events! And the people who roll in wealth are sometimes very poor in that respect.—Might we not see Poucette, madame," she asked the peasant, "so that we may find out at once whether or not we may count upon her?"
"Well, yes! but just now she's at our little piece of land with Claudine, planting potatoes, because Guillot's got some work at Monsieur Luminot's."
"Is your piece of land far from here?"
"Oh, no! not so very far; if you'd like to go there—you see I can't show you the way myself, and Mariette is doing something for me just now.—Père Ledrux, you know where our field is."
"Let me see! Pardi! to be sure I do; it's right alongside of Gros-Pierre's field, where he's set out plum trees that don't grow."