Antek, when the smith left him, had set to chopping straw so frantically that he forgot everything but his work; and Kuba, returning from the wood, cried out aloud: “Mercy! there will be enough of it for a week’s fodder!” And then Antek woke up from his musings, threw the straw-cutter aside, stretched himself, and went into the hut. “What must be will be,” he reflected, “and I must speak to my father this day.—That blacksmith fellow is a lying traitor; his advice may be good, for all that. Nay, there must be something in it.” He peeped in at his father’s door, and at once drew back; a score of urchins were sitting there. Roch was teaching them, and paying great heed to their behaviour; going round with beads in hand, hearing their lessons, correcting them at times; at others pulling one boy’s ear or patting another’s head, but for the most part sitting patiently and explaining the printed matter, or putting questions, which the children hastened to answer in chorus as fast as they could, gobbling like a troop of little turkeys when excited. Hanka was getting dinner ready, and having a talk with her father, old Bylitsa, who seldom came, because he was always ailing and could hardly move about. He sat close to the window, his chin and hands on his staff; hoary-headed, with a twitch of the lips and a treble voice like a bird’s, accompanied by thin wheezing sounds in the windpipe. “Have you breakfasted?” she inquired. “To say true, Veronka forgot me.” “Oh, she even starves her dogs! they often come to me for food,” she cried. Her elder sister and she had been on bad terms ever since last winter, when their mother had died, and Veronka seized on all she had left, refusing to give anything up; which had estranged them. He took her part in a feeble voice. “They have not too much for themselves. Staho threshes at the organist’s, where he gets food and a score of kopeks daily besides. And there are many mouths to feed in the cabin: the potato-patch cannot suffice for all. True, they have a couple of milch-cows and take butter and cheese to town, and get a few coppers; but she often forgets to give me my meals. Yet I do not want much ... only a little every day, and at the right hour....” “Then come to us in spring, since you are so ill off with that jade!” “But I make no complaint, no fuss; only....” His voice died into silence. “With us, you could tend the geese, and see to the children.” “Hanka,” he said under his breath, “there is nothing that I would not do.” “There is room for you here; I should put up a bed for you and make you cosy.”