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He reached a sudden decision. "I'll punt him back into the water!" But mother Chiquard stayed him, just as he was putting his idea into execution. "You mustn't: suppose somebody has seen us already? It would land us in no end of trouble!"
Of course if I got run in on the way for stealing, or as a rogue and vagabond, I couldn't say how long it would take." The meal was over, and the old woman was quietly washing up her few plates and dishes, when Bouzille, who had gone down to the river to fetch the rushes, suddenly called shrilly to mother Chiquard. "Mother Chiquard! Mother Chiquard! Come and look!
"That's all according," said the old woman, eyeing the tramp with great mistrust; "I haven't much faith in arrangements with you: rascals like you always manage to do honest folk." Mother Chiquard turned back into her cottage; it was no weather for her to stop out of doors, for a strong north wind was blowing, and that was bad for her rheumatism.
"Where did you get these fowls?" mother Chiquard asked, more as a matter of form than anything else, for she was pretty sure they had not been honestly come by. Bouzille put his finger to his lip. "Hush!" he murmured gently; "that's a secret between me and the poultry. Well, is it a go?" and he held out his hand to the old lady. She hesitated a moment and then made up her mind.
Bouzille deliberately followed her inside and closed the door carefully behind him. Without ceremony he walked up to the hearth, where a scanty wood fire was burning, and put down his pack so as to be able to rub his hands more freely. "Miserable weather, mother Chiquard!" The obstinate old lady stuck to her one idea.
Often did the astonished population see him bent over his tricycle, with his pack on his back, pedalling with extraordinary rapidity down the hills, while the carriages behind him bumped and jumped over the inequalities in the surface of the road until it seemed impossible that they could retain their equilibrium. Old mother Chiquard had recognised the cause of the racket.
While he was chattering like this Bouzille had finished the job set him by mother Chiquard, who meanwhile had peeled some potatoes and poured the soup on the bread. He wiped his brow, and seeing the brimming pot, gave a meaning wink and licked his tongue. "I'll make the fire up, mother Chiquard; I'm getting jolly hungry." "So you ought to be, at half-past eleven," the old woman replied.
I didn't lose my time, for I knew all the gentlemen and ladies and took the best part of sixteen shillings, and the blind beggar who sits on the steps of the church called me all the names he could put his tongue to!" The tramp's story interested mother Chiquard mightily, but her former idea still dominated her mind. "So they didn't punish you for stealing my rabbit?"
Living here summer and winter, with her rabbits and her fowls, mother Chiquard earned a little money by making baskets; but she was crippled with rheumatism, and was miserable every time she had to go down to the river to pull out the bundles of rushes that she put there to soak; the work meant not merely an hour's paddling in mud up to the knees, but also a fortnight's acute agony and at least a shilling for medicine.
He stood up and addressed mother Chiquard who, white as a sheet, was watching him in silence. "I see what it is: he must have got caught in some mill wheel: that's what has cut him up like that." Mother Chiquard shook her head uneasily. "Suppose it was a murder! That would be an ugly business!" "It's no good my looking at him any more," said Bouzille.
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