"And are they not to remain at home more than a week?" mournfully asked the old mother, with tears in her eyes. "Poor souls, they will have no time even to rest a little, no time to get acquainted with their father's roof; and I shall not have time to have a good look at them!" "Have done, old woman! no howling! A Cossack is not made to spend his life with women. Hadst thou the power, thou wouldst put both of them under thy petticoat, and sit upon them as a hen does upon her eggs. Go, go, and have everything in the house put upon the table. We do not want pastry, honey-cakes, poppyseed cakes, and all those sweet nonsenses. Bring us a whole roasted sheep, give us a buck, let us have some mead[1] that is twenty years old, and above all things, plenty of brandy; and let it not be the brandy with raisins and various spices, but plain, clean, corn brandy, that hisses and simmers." Boolba conducted his sons into the parlour, from which hastily rushed two pretty maid servants, with red necklaces, who were putting the rooms in order. They might have been scared by the arrival of the young masters, who never let any woman pass by quietly; or, perhaps, they did it only in accordance with the custom of all women, which is to shriek aloud, and run away with the utmost speed at the sight of a man; and then afterwards stand and gaze at him, covering their faces with their sleeves, as if vastly ashamed. The great room was arranged according to the taste of those times, of which there are nowhere such vivid pictures to be found as in songs and popular legends;--these, too, are no longer, as of yore, sung in Ukraine by blind, long-bearded old men, who used to sing them in the hearing of assembled crowds, and with the accompaniment of the soft music of the _bandora_[2]