“Who gave you that bruise, Vitek?” Hanka inquired.
“Oh, I struck my head against the manger!” But he turned as red as a crayfish and rubbed the place, with a meaning glance towards Yuzka.
“Have you brought any palm-boughs yet?”
“As soon as I have done breakfast, I shall go for them,” he replied, eating at a great rate.
Here Yagna put down her spoon and went out.
“What has come to her?” Yuzka whispered to Pete, as she helped him to some more barszcz.
“Some folk have not your gift of continual babbling.—Has she milked her cow?”
“I saw her take a pail to the byre.”
“By the by, Yuzka, we must get some oil-cake for the ‘Grey One.’ ”
“Yes, I saw this morning that her milk was turned to beestings.”
“If so, she will calve in a day or two.”
“Will you come to church for the palm-bough blessing?” Yuzka asked her.
“Go along with Vitek. And Pete may go likewise, when the horses have been seen to. I must stay and take care of Father. And perhaps Roch may be coming in, with news of Antek.”
“Shall I tell Yagustynka to come tomorrow for the potato-planting?”
“Surely: we alone should be too few for the work, and the choice has to be quickly made.”
“And about the dung?”
“Pete will have done carting it to the field by tomorrow at noon, and will set about spreading it along with Vitek after dinner; you too must help them as soon as you have time.”
A loud cackling of geese outside—and in burst Vitek, gasping for breath.
“What! can you not even let the geese be?”
“They wanted to bite me: I was only keeping them off!”
And he threw down a large bundle of osier rods, sprinkled all over with catkins, and still wet with dew; which Yuzka instantly made into smaller bundles, tied them with red woollen thread, and asked him in a whisper:
“Was it the stork that gave you such a blow on the forehead?”
“It was; but tell no one.” He cast a look at his mistress, busy taking the Sunday clothes out of the chest. “I’ll tell you all. … I had noticed that it used to spend the night in the porch; so I slipped in there, when everyone was asleep. … Though it pecked at me, I had it fast, and was about to wrap it in my spencer and carry it off … but the dogs got scent of me, and I had to run for it. … One of my trouser-legs is torn.—But I’ll have the bird still.”
“What if the priest gets to know that you have his stork?”
“His? it is mine! … And who will tell him?”
“Where can you put it, that it may not be found?”
“I know of a hiding-place, safe from the gendarmes themselves. After a time I shall take it back to the cabin, and let them believe I have caught and tamed another stork. Who will find out that it is the same one?—Only say naught, and I’ll get you some birds—or a leveret.”
“Am I a boy, to play with birds? You silly thing!—Off and dress: we shall go to church together.”
“Yuzka, let me carry the palm-boughs, will ye?”
“A pretty saying! Ye know that only women may take them to be blessed.”
“I mean, through the village: ye shall have them back before we are in the church.”
He begged her so earnestly that she consented, and turned to Nastka, who had just come in, clad in her best, and with a palm-bough in her hand.
“Any news of Matthew?” Hanka asked her at once.
“Only what the Voyt said yesterday: he’s better.”
“The Voyt knows naught, and makes up tales to please us.”
“But he told his Reverence just the same.”
“Then why said he nothing about Antek?”
“No doubt because Matthew is with the others, and Antek in a separate cell.”
“He’s but a babbler that wants to talk.”
“Did he say aught to you?”
“He comes daily, but only to see Yagna. With her he has some private business, so they meet and speak of it. Apart. In the enclosure.”
She had lowered her tone, and laid stress on every word, looking out of the window the while. Just then, Yagna appeared outside the porch, very well apparelled, a palm-bough in one hand, a prayerbook in the other. Hanka’s eyes followed her out.
“The folk are on their way to church.”
“Why, the bells have not sounded yet!”
But, just as she spoke, they rang out with a clash and a roar, booming and thundering their call to church.
In a few minutes, all the people had gone.
Hanka, left alone, put the pots on the fire to boil, and then took the children out of doors to comb them thoroughly—a thing she had never time to do properly on workdays.
She then went with them to the straw with which the potato-pits were strewn, and left them there to play. After which, having gone into the hut, and looked into every pot and pan, she said her rosary; for she had too much difficulty with her prayerbook.
It was now hard upon noontide, and Lipka was plunged deep in Sunday rest, with no sounds but the chirping of sparrows, or the twittering of the nest-building swallows under the eaves, in the warm early spring weather. Over everything hung the strangely resplendent canopy of a bright blue sky; and the fruit-trees stretched out their branches, covered with big buds, and the alders fringing the pond waved their yellow catkins silently, and the rust-coloured poplar shoots swelled with viscid aromatic sprouts opening to the light, like the gaping beaks of nestlings that want food.
On the warm cabin walls, flies had already begun to cluster, and from time to time a bee hummed about the daisies, or over the bushes, bursting out into little tongues of green flame.
Only a damp wind still continued to blow from the outlying fields and woodlands.
It was about the middle of Mass; for the sounds of far-off chants mingled with the
