“What do you want?” she asked.
“Hospitality for an hour and shelter for our horse.”
She looked out on to the road and saw our turn-out.
“Hey, father!” She called out in a husky voice, “come and look here!”
A stout man, quite as stout as she was, but older, came hobbling heavily along. She pointed to the gig, so oddly equipped, and he burst out laughing and said to me in an insolent way:
“Well, what do you want?”
I repeated my phrase: “Hospitality for an hour,” &c. &c.
“Perhaps we can do it, but it’ll want paying for.”
I showed him twenty francs. The old woman gave him a nudge.
“Oh, but in these times, you know, it’s well worth forty francs.”