“Ah! and ye too are here, Roch! How could I forget you so?” And she welcomed him, and kissed his hands, while he said, with a smile:
“Very easily!—Well, I wished to bring you your goodman home; and now here he is!”
“Aye, here he is!” she cried, standing up before Antek and eyeing him in admiration. For he was so much whiter now—so much more refined in his strength—so beautiful, so lordly—as if he were someone else! She looked at him in bewilderment.
“Have I changed in aught, that your eyes examine me so?”
“No, not changed … and yet somehow not the same at all!”
“Oh, when I set to fieldwork again, I shall soon be once more just as I was!”
And now, making a dart into the hut, she came out, bearing her youngest-born.
“You see him for the first time, Antek!” she cried, as she lifted up the boy, roaring lustily. “Just look: he is as like you as two peas.”
“A fine youngster!” He wrapped him up in the skirt of his capote, and rocked him to and fro.
“I have given him the name of Roch!—Here, Peter, go to Father,” and she pushed forward the other boy, who clambered on to Antek’s knee, prattling childishly the while. Antek caressed him as tenderly as the other.
“Dear little things! darling mites!—How Peter has grown!—And he talks a little already. …”
“Oh, and he takes such notice, and he’s so clever! Can he but get hold of a whip, he wants at once to crack it at the geese!” She came kneeling down beside them. “Peter! Come! Try to say ‘Dad’!”
He indeed said something dimly resembling the word, and continued cooing to himself, and pulling his father’s hair.
“Yuzka,” Antek said, “why do you eye me askant so? Come hither.”
“But I dare not,” she said.
“Come to me, silly one, come to me!” And he folded her in a kind brotherly embrace.
“And now you will obey me in all things, even as you did once obey Father. Fear not: I shall never be harsh to you, and from me you shall suffer no wrong.”
The girl burst into a flood of tears, remembering her lost father and her brother who was drowned.
“When the Voyt told me of his death,” Antek said, “I was quite stunned with grief. How dear he was to me! I never dreamed. … And I had already arranged how we should divide the land; I had even thought of a wife for him!” he said, sorrowfully; when Roch, to turn away their thoughts from so sad a subject, exclaimed, rising from his seat:
“Talking is all very well, but not when the stomach cries famine!”
“Dear, dear! I had forgotten all about that.—Yuzka, just catch me those two yellow cockerels. … Tsip, tsip, tsip! come along! … Will you not begin with eggs? Or a bit of new bread, and butter made but yesterday?—Yes, cut off their heads and scald them in boiling water! … I shall have everything ready in a moment. … What a ninny I was to forget!”
“Let be, Hanka; the cocks will come in later. I would have something more homely just now; something of the country, I am so fed up with town food: give me potatoes and barszcz of all things!” And he laughed merrily. “Only get something else for Roch!”
“Thanks heartily; but both you and I have the same tastes as to that.”
Hanka went off to get things ready. But the potatoes were on the boil by now, and she had only to fetch from the larder a huge sausage for the barszcz.
“This I was keeping on purpose for you, Antek. ’Tis from the pig ye sent me word to kill for Easter.”
“And a splendid festoon it makes, too; though with the Lord’s help, we shall get through it!—But where are the presents, Roch, say?”
The old man hauled forward a large bundle, out of which Antek took a variety of articles.
“Here’s for you, Hanka, whenever you would fare anywhither.” And he handed her a woollen shawl—just like the one the organist’s wife had!—a black ground, with red and green chequers.
“For me! O Antek, how good of you not to forget!” she cried, overwhelmed with gratitude.
“Roch reminded me,” he confessed, “or I should have forgotten. We went together to make our choices and purchases.”
They had bought a great many things: he had shoes for her besides, and a silk kerchief for a headdress: azure-blue, with tiny yellow flowers. Yuzka got another just like it, but green; also a frill and several rows of beads, with a long ribbon to tie them. There were gingerbread cakes for the children, and mouth-organs as well; and there was even something that he set apart unopened, for the blacksmith’s wife. Nor had he forgotten either Vitek or the farm-servant.
And how they all exclaimed with admiration at each new marvel as it came forth, and looked it over, and measured its size! How the tears of joy ran down Hanka’s cheeks! and how Yuzka caught her head in her hands with bewildered amazement!
“Well have you deserved all these presents. Roch told me how perfectly everything has been managed on the farm.—Be quiet now, I did not come to be thanked!” he cried, for they were all crowding to embrace him in their gratitude.
“I should never have dreamed of buying any such beautiful things,” Hanka said, still in the melting mood, as she tried on her new shoes. “They are a little tight for me, now I go barefoot; but in winter they will be just the thing.”
Roch asked her about the doings in the village. She answered, but in a desultory way, being very busy with the food. In a short time she had set before them a large dish of boiled potatoes, plentifully seasoned with fat bacon, and another one, not a whit smaller, of barszcz, in which there swam a huge sausage, looking for all the world like a floating wheel.
And they fell to with an excellent appetite.
“That’s the food I like,” he cried, merrily;
