“Well, well, no thanks: folk ought to help their neighbours. The wool is carded, and weighs about a hundred pounds.” “Yes, I shall spin it, and am well able. Why, when with my parents, I not only spun thread but wove cloth and dyed it. We never had to buy garments.” “Look at it: how soft it is! and how dry!” “’Tis beautiful wool. From the Manor sheep, belike.” “Ah, and should you happen to need flour or groats or pease, pray let me know; you shall have all you want, and I will settle when I pay you.” She then took her into a store-room full of sacks and barrels of corn, and flitches of bacon hanging from the walls. The rafters bore long skeins of spun yarn in clusters, and on the floor thick rolls of linen cloth lay piled up. As to the strings of dried mushrooms, the cheeses, the jars crammed with various good things, the shelves groaning under huge round loaves, and the other articles of household consumption, who could tell them all? “You shall have the smoothest yarn that hands can make,” said Hanka. “And thanks once more for all your kindness. But I fear I shall be unable to carry all that wool by myself.” “It will be taken over to you.” “That is well, for I have still to go about the village.” She again thanked her, but now with something less of warmth and expansiveness: envy was gnawing at her heart. “’Tis our people gives them all they have, carries it to them, and produces the same ... and their store-rooms overflow by our gifts! Besides, who knows how much money they have out at high interest? Ah, ‘Who has sheep to shear, he shall have good cheer.’ ... It were harder work for them to produce all this.—Well, well!” So she thought on her exit from the house, whence Magda had now disappeared with all her things; and as it was getting late, Hanka quickened her pace. Where—and of whom—could she inquire about work for Antek? When on her father-in-law’s farm, she had found everybody friendly; people were constantly coming to visit her, either to get some service done or to exchange kind looks and words. And now there she was, standing out in the cold, and knowing not to whom she could go! She stopped in front of Klemba’s, and of Simon’s too: but she was loath to enter, for now she recollected how Antek had told her not to make any calls. “People can do nothing, and will give no assistance—only pity; and that they would give just as well to a dead dog!” he had said. “How true, oh, how true he spoke!” she said, remembering the organist and his wife. Oh, had she but been a man! She would have set to work at once, and put everything to rights. She would not then have had to whine and lay bare her wounds that her neighbours might pity her!