"I don't know," answered the young man in a calm voice, and went on philandering with the maid, in spite of his stepmother's arrival. He had got hold of a long straw, with which he was tickling her neck, and which he quickly hid behind his back whenever she let the potato-knife fall and laughingly tried to seize it. Where could Martin and Rosa be? They were not in the room downstairs, for she had looked in at the low window. She gazed around with burning, impatient eyes; where had they hidden themselves? All at once she felt disgusted with the two flirting on the doorstep. Were they not ashamed of themselves? She tore the straw angrily out of her stepson's hand and pulled it to pieces. "Stop that nonsense," she said sharply, frowning. "Go in, Marianna, _dalej_, don't lounge there any longer. When Mr. Tiralla comes home we are to have supper, _dalej_." Disturbed in her amusement, the maid, who was still quite hot from laughing, murmured sullenly, "The master hasn't been out at all; he's in the house. That [Pg 202] man was here"--she turned up her nose--"the schoolmaster from Starawies. I had to bring some bottles up from the cellar, and they've been drinking beer and gin. Now the master has gone to bed and is asleep." She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head as she tripped away. "Father drinks," said Mikolai, his laughing face all at once overcast. "He never drank before, why does he do so now?" He looked at his stepmother inquiringly; he felt as though he must demand an explanation of her. How could she allow him to drink so much? And it was not only beer and wine, for a short time before, when he had gone to the pig-market in Gnesen, he had brought gin back with him, a whole keg of clear gin, some bad stuff made of potatoes, like that given to reapers at harvest-time. And he drank it off as if it were small beer. "Tell me how it is that father has so changed," he continued, in a voice that sounded quite rough. "He used to be so lively formerly. He has always been fond of a drink--who wouldn't be?--but still he never took more than he could stand. But now!" He shook his head, and his glance seemed to Mrs. Tiralla to have suddenly grown suspicious. "I don't know how it's happened." "I don't know either," said she, as she cast her eyes around. Where had those two crept to? They had both gone, and probably together. Nothing else was of any consequence to her at the present moment. Let Mikolai think what he liked, it was perfectly immaterial to her. "Where can Becker be?" she asked impatiently.