The real master was in Algiers nearly all the time.
During his absence the great house was closed, excepting the kitchen and two rooms above it.

Of these Brossard had one and Henri the other.
Henri was the cook; a slow, stupid old man, not to be jogged out of either his good-nature or his slow gait by anything that Brossard might say.
Henri cooked and washed and mended, and hoed in the garden.

Brossard worked in the fields and shaved down the expenses of their living closer and closer.

All that was thus saved fell to his share, or he might not have watched the expenses so carefully.
Much saving had made him miserly.

Old Therese, the woman with the fish-cart, used to say that he was the stingiest man in all Tourraine.
She ought to know, for she had sold him a fish every Friday during all those twenty years, and he had never once failed to quarrel about the price.