“You are not going to die yet, are you?”
“Mon chéri, not before you marry me.”
“And there will always be work to do in Beaucourt, the sort of work that makes a man go to bed happily with the smell of good soil or sawdust in his nostrils. I say, that was a wonderful bed we bought this morning!”
“Yes. We should not have liked an iron bed. You will hold me very close, some day, my Paul.”
“And I shall never let you go.”
Next morning Brent tied up his belongings in the check handkerchief, kissed Manon, shook hands with Madame Berthier, and marched off to the Place Vogel. Monsieur Talmas’ cart started at nine on the return journey to Beaucourt, and Paul found two other travellers on the wooden seat, an old lady who was joining her married daughter, and Monsieur Poupart, who had been spending two days in Amiens buying goods for the shop. Poupart had a yellow face and a melancholy manner, and the old woman had been boring him with the irritating vivacity of second childhood. She asked interminable questions.
“Work the pump, will you?” said Poupart to his neighbour; “my arm is stiff. They had la grippe in the house where I have been staying; I expect I have caught it; I always do.”
“I have had la grippe thirteen times,” said the old lady triumphantly, leaning forward and looking across Paul at the pessimist.
“The thirteenth attack should have killed you, madame;” and, in a truculent aside, “you would never have had thirteen attacks if you had been my mother-in-law.”
The old lady chattered to Paul all the way to Beaucourt. She was very inquisitive, and Paul was hard put to keep her curiosity within the limits of a decent reticence, for her old hands were ready to pull everything to pieces, even to interfere with her neighbours’ clothes. She asked Paul if he was married, and cackled when he told her that he was only betrothed.