But what was the use in thinking about it? “Ach! The mean peasant! The unnatural father!” She stumbled, unable to see the path through her tears. “Bah! They are fools, those wise men,” she shook her head disgustedly. “They are fools who say that it is better to have a relative rich, though a miser, than one who is poor and generous. Both are like death. Can you take from the miser? Nor can you take from the one who has nothing to give.” Presently, on reaching a sudden turn in the road, she heard a merry voice babbling incoherent fits of song. That was Addom on his way home from the _kabock_. Addom was a drunkard. He drank like a fish. Addom, too, was often idle, she mused. Gavrelo never drank, though he liked a glass of vodka. But what would Gavrelo do in a _kabock_ where men talked as they drank? Gavrelo never talked to any one. He only worked. That was why her parents had made her marry him instead of Addom, who drank and who never kept his word, just as Gavrelo never broke his word. But Addom’s daughter Anulia, who was also to marry this spring, was to receive one of her father’s two cows as her wedding-gift. Anulia Addom also wore machine-made stockings which she bought from the Jewess Deborah--stockings and boots every Sunday! Natalka bound her ankles in cloths and wore birch-bark sandals to church. Katherina shook her head. A man who drank was perhaps better-natured, more generous. Reaching the yard, she saw Natalka still in the window spinning. Natalka was eighteen. She was small like her mother, but she was rosy and healthy. Her hair lay in two thick, brown braids on her back. Her faded red kerchief was tied with a coquettish knot, and her little round nose had a mischievous tilt. But just now she was neither coquettish nor mischievous. She was very earnest. Her wedding was to be the first in the village this spring, and she was hurrying to finish all her mother’s spinning before it came. Her hands twirled the spindle rapidly; her head scarcely moved except to moisten the thread with her lips, or to extricate a knot in the flax with her small white teeth. Katherina watched her a moment. Should she tell her--that her father would send her away with empty hands? No! There was time enough. But as she stood watching she saw Natalka stop her work suddenly; her hands became still, her head drooped for a moment. In agony, Katherina wondered. Could she know, then? Perhaps she guessed! Katherina turned away from the window. About the yard all the buildings stood facing in a semicircle, the hut, the barns, the pig-pen, the chicken-coop. Katherina went toward the coop. In the barn she heard Gavrelo. He rarely forgot the keys. “He rarely forgets them,” she muttered to herself. The corners of her mouth lifted firmly. “Well, Natalka shall have a fine trousseau, anyway. Her _kubial_, at any rate, shall not go off empty!”