"Good. I have a team. We'll drive to the north field. I've got to start getting the corn in pretty soon."
The room in the barn was bare: four board walls, a board ceiling and floor, an iron cot, blankets, the sound and smell of the cows beneath. Hugo slept dreamlessly, and when he woke, he was ravenous.
His week passed. Cane drove him like a slave-master, but to drive Hugo was an unhazardous thing. He did not think much, and when he did, it was to read the innuendo of living that was written parallel to the existence of his employer and Roseanne. They were troubled with each other. Part of that trouble sprang from an evident source: Cane was a miser. He resented the amount of food that Hugo consumed, despite the unequal ratio of Hugo's labours. When Hugo asked for a few dollars in advance, he was curtly refused. That had happened at lunch one day. After lunch, however, and evidently after Cane had debated with his wife, he inquired of Hugo what he wanted. A razor and some shaving things and new trousers, Hugo had said.
Cane drove the station wagon to town and returned with the desired articles. He gave them to Hugo.
"Thank you," Hugo said.
Cane chuckled, opening his thin lips wide. "All right, Danner. As a matter of fact, it's money in my bank."
"Money in your bank?"
"Sure. I've lived here for years and I get a ten-per-cent discount at the general store. But I'm charging you full price—naturally."
"Naturally," Hugo agreed.
That was one thing that would make the tribulation in her eyes. Hugo wished that he could have met these two people on a different basis, so that he could have learned the truth about them. It was plain that they were educated, cultured, refined. Cane had said something once about raising cattle in England, and Roseanne had cooked peas as she had learned to cook them in France. "Petits pois au beurre," she had murmured—with an unimpeachable accent.