“Poor stuff.—As thin as buttermilk,” he grumbled, when pretty well filled.
“Naught less than cream would do for you, belike? Wait till you get some!”
When he could eat no more and had taken the reins to start, she said to him sarcastically: “Take service with Yagna; she will fatten you!”
“Surely. When she ruled here, no one starved in the hut!” And he gave the horse a stroke with the whip, and the cart a push with his shoulder, to set it in motion.
He had wounded her to the quick, but was off before she could find words to answer him.
The swallows were twittering under the thatch, and a flock of pigeons alighted cooing in the porch. She drove them away; and then, hearing a grunt, rushed out, fearing her pigs were at the onion-bed. Fortunately, it was but the neighbour’s sow, rooting beneath the fence.
“Just put your snout inside our enclosure, and I shall dispose of you in a fine way!”
But no sooner was she returning to work than the stork hopped on to the porch, lurked about there for a moment, cocked first his right eye at the loaves, then his left … and set to dig into the dough, swallowing it by large morsels!
Uttering a loud cry, she rushed at him.
He fled away with wide-open beak, making frantic efforts to get the dough down; but when she caught up with him to give him a beating, he flew up and alighted on the top of the barn, where he remained for a long time, rapping out his klek-klek and wiping the dough from his beak on the thatch.
“O you thief! let me but catch you, and I’ll shatter you to bits!” she threatened, filling up the hollows the stork’s beak had made.
Yuzka came in then, and all Hanka’s anger was poured forth on her.
“Where have you been, you gadabout?—Always running hither and thither, like a cat with a bladder tied to its tail!—I’ll tell Antek what a worker you are!—But get the embers out now, and quickly!”
“I was only at the Ploshkas’ with their Kate. All are afield, and the poor girl has no one to fetch her water even!”
“What ails her, then?”
“The smallpox, I think; she is flushed and burning hot.”
“And if you have caught it from her, I will take you off to the hospital.”
“Is it likely? I have sat by a sickbed already, nor ever got any hurt. Have ye no mind how I tended you, when you were lying in?” And so she went on after her fashion, prattling away in her absurdly thoughtless fashion, driving the flies off meantime and preparing to take the embers out of the oven.
Hanka interrupted her as she worked: “Ah! you must take the food to the people in the field.”
“Instantly, instantly!—Shall I fry some eggs for Antek?”
“Do; but take heed not to put in too much fat!”
“Oh, do ye grudge it him?”
“How could I? But it might not agree with him.”
Yuzka loved a run; so she did her work quick, and was off, before Hanka had closed the oven, with three vessels of sour milk, and bread done up in her apron.
Hanka cried to her from the window: “See whether the linen spread to bleach is dry, and wet it on your return: it is sure to be dry before sunset.”
But the little chit was over the stile by then; the song she was singing floated back, and her hemp-coloured hair was seen bobbing along through the rye.
On the arable land, by the forest, the komorniki were scattering the dung brought previously by Pete, while Antek was ploughing it in. The stiff clay soil, though it had been harrowed not long ago, was hard as stone and baked in the sun; the horses had to pull with such mighty efforts as to strain their harness to breaking-point.
Antek, seemingly glued to his plough-handles, drove his way on with dogged pertinacity, his mind concentrated on his work: now and then clacking the whip on the horses’ hind quarters, but mostly encouraging them with a smack of his lips; for the work was really very wearisome. With a firm steady hand he directed the plough, cutting furrow after furrow, in long straight strips, such as it is the custom to make for wheat-land.
Crows hopped along by the furrows, picking up earthworms; and the bay colt, that had been out to graze on the field pathway, again and again pressed to its mother’s side, eager to suck her milk.
“Milk at its age! What can have come over the greedy thing!” Antek growled, striking at its legs with his whip. It ran off, tail in the air, while he went on ploughing patiently, only at times breaking the silence with a word or two to the women. He was cross and tired out, and, when Pete arrived, gave vent to his feelings.
“These women,” he cried, “have been fain to stop working because of you; and you come on now slow as a ragpicker!—Wherefore have ye stopped so long at the edge of the forest? I saw you!”
“The ‘wherefore’ is there still; ye can see it; it will wait.”
“A curse on your saucy tongue!—Vee-o, old fellow, Vee-o!”
But now the horses went slower, foam-flecked and worn out. He himself, stripped to his shirt and drawers, was perspiring profusely, and his hands too were feeling the stress of the work. So that, on perceiving Yuzka, he cried out very heartily:
“Good now, ’twas high time ye came; we are all famishing!”
He finished the furrow up to the pinewood, took the horses from the plough and turned them loose to graze on the verdant road by the forest: then, flinging himself down at the border of the wood, ate like a ravenous wolf, Yuzka all the time chattering away until he had enough of it.
“Let me be.—I care naught for your tittle-tattle,” he said peevishly,
