As soon as they finish milking a beast, they change its position, giving it a fresh patch of grass on which to graze.
Then they start on their way home, more slowly now, weighed down by the load of milk, the mother in front, the daughter behind.
Abruptly the latter halts, sets down her burden, sits down, and begins to cry.
Madame Malivoire, missing the sound of steps behind her, turns round and is quite amazed.
“What’s the matter with you?” she said.
Her daughter Céleste, a tall girl with flaming red hair and flaming cheeks, flecked with freckles as though sparks of fire had fallen upon her face one day as she worked in the sun, murmurs, moaning softly, like a beaten child:
“I can’t carry the milk any further.”
Her mother looked at her suspiciously.
“What’s the matter with you?” she repeated.
“It drags too heavy, I can’t,” replied Céleste, who had collapsed and was lying on the ground between the two pails, hiding her eyes in her apron.
“What’s the matter with you, then?” said her mother for the third time. The girl moaned:
“I guess there’s a baby on the way.” And she broke into sobs.
The old woman now in her turn set down her load, so amazed that she could find nothing to say. At last she stammered:
“You … you … you’re going to have a baby, you clod! How can that be?”
The Malivoires were prosperous farmers, wealthy and of a certain position, widely respected, good business folk, of some importance in the district.
“I guess I am, all the same,” faltered Céleste.
The frightened mother looked at the weeping girl grovelling at her feet. After a few seconds she cried:
“You’re going to have a baby! A baby! Where did you get it, you slut?”
Céleste, shaken with emotion, murmured:
“I guess it was in Polyte’s coach.”
The old woman tried to understand, tried to imagine, to realise who could have brought this misfortune upon her daughter. If the lad was well off and of decent position, an arrangement might be come to. It wasn’t so bad, yet. Céleste was not the first to be in the same way, but it was annoying all the same, seeing their position and the way people talked.
“And who was it, you slut?” she repeated.
Céleste, resolved to make a clean breast of it, stammered:
“I guess it was Polyte.”
At that Madame Malivoire, mad with rage, rushed upon her daughter and began to beat her with such fury that her hat fell off in the effort.
With great blows of the fist she struck her on the head, on the back, all over her body; Céleste, prostrate between the two pails, which afforded her some slight protection, shielded just her face with her hands.
All the cows, disturbed, had stopped grazing and turned round, staring with their great eyes. The last one mooed, stretching out its muzzle towards the women.
After beating her daughter till she was out of breath, Madame Malivoire stopped, exhausted; her spirits reviving a little, she tried to get a thorough understanding of the situation.
“—Polyte! Lord save us, it’s not possible! How could you, with a carrier? You must have lost your wits. He must have played you a trick, the good-for-nothing!”
Céleste, still prostrate, murmured in the dust:
“I didn’t pay my fare!”
And the old Norman woman understood.
Every week, on Wednesday and on Saturday, Céleste went to town with the farm produce, poultry, cream, and eggs.
She started at seven with her two huge baskets on her arm, the dairy produce in one, the chickens in the other, and went to the main road to wait for the coach to Yvetot.
She set down her wares and sat in the ditch, while the chickens with their short pointed beaks and the ducks with their broad flat bills thrust their heads between the wicker bars and looked about them with their round, stupid, surprised eyes.
Soon the bus, a sort of yellow box with a black leather cap on the top, came up, jerking and quivering with the trotting of the old white horse.
Polyte the coachman, a big jolly fellow, stout though still young, and so burnt up by sun and wind, soaked by rain, and coloured with brandy that his face and neck were brick-red, cracked his whip and shouted from the distance:
“Morning, Mam’zelle Céleste. In good health, I hope?”
She gave him her baskets, one after the other, which he stowed in the boot; then she got in, lifting her leg high up to reach the step, and exposing a sturdy leg clad in a blue stocking.
Every time Polyte repeated the same joke: “Clumsy; it’s not got any thinner.”
She laughed, thinking it funny.
Then he uttered a “Gee up, old girl!” which started off the thin horse. Then Céleste, reaching for her purse in the depths of her pocket, slowly took out fivepence, threepence for herself and twopence for the baskets, and handed them to Polyte over his shoulder.
He took them, saying:
“Aren’t we going to have our little bit of sport today?”
And he laughed heartily, turning round towards her so as to stare at her at his ease.
She found it a big expense, the half-franc for a journey of two miles. And when she had no coppers she felt it still more keenly; it was hard to make up her mind to part with a silver coin. One day, as she was paying, she asked:
“From a good customer like me you oughtn’t to take more than threepence.”
He burst out laughing.
“Threepence, my beauty; why, you’re worth more than that.”
She insisted on the point.
“But you make a good two francs a month out of me.”
He whipped up his horse and exclaimed:
“Look here, I’m an obliging fellow! We’ll call it quits for a bit of sport.”
“What do you mean?” she asked with an air of innocence.
He was so amused that he laughed till he coughed.
“A bit of sport is a bit of sport, damn it; a game for a lad and a lass, a dance for two without
