“Say no word against her!” cried Yagustynka. “She’s no everyday woman, but a heart of pure gold. I do not know anyone better and brighter than her. I am with Hanka night and day; I have eyes to see, and am no fool. Oh, what that woman has had to endure!” “Aye, and she will have to endure still more.... Is not Yagna in the same cabin with her? Trouble and distress will begin once more, when Antek comes back.” “I heard,” Filipka bleated, “of Yagna having taken up with the Voyt: is that true?” But they laughed at her asking what the very sparrows twittered among themselves. “Let not your tongues wag!” said Yagustynka reprovingly; “the wind may hear your words and carry them where it should not.” They set again to work, with hoes flashing, and at times clinking on a stone; but they talked on as they worked, sparing no one in the village. As she walked away to take a look at the farm-yard, Hanka stooped, passing under the cherry-trees; for the wet boughs, laden with buds and white blossoms and sprouting leaves, were catching at her head and sprinkling it with dew. She had scarce been out at all since Easter, having suffered a relapse after her “churching.” To-day’s tidings had brought her out of bed, and set her on her legs; and though she still felt very shaky, she peered everywhere, and with growing vexation. The cows had been ill cared for, and their flanks were clotted with dung; the sucking-pigs were in poor condition; even the geese seemed unnaturally silent, as if they had been badly fed. “Why,” she cried out angrily to Pete, who was driving off to cart the manure, “why have you not rubbed down the horse?” But he only went past, muttering something between his teeth. A fresh motive for exasperation. In the granary, Yagna’s pig was devouring the seed-potatoes heaped on the threshing-floor, while the fowls were pecking at a quantity of inferior corn that ought long since to have been taken up to the loft. For this she rated Yuzka soundly, and pulled Vitek’s curly hair till the boy wriggled himself loose and made off, while Yuzka slunk away, weeping and querulous. “I am always at work, yet ye scold me continually: Yagna never does aught, and you let her be!” “Now, now, be still, silly one! You see but too well all that goes on here!” “But how am I to do everything? How can I?” “Be still, I say.—Now carry them the potatoes, or they will have to stop work.” It was no use scolding, she saw. “True, the girl cannot suffice for all; and as to the hirelings—mercy on us! even ere noon, they are looking forward to sunset! As well engage a wolf to tend sheep, as think to get profit out of a hireling. They have no conscience!” Revolving these bitter thoughts in her mind, she discharged her fury on the pig, that ran off squealing, with Lapa savagely hanging on to its ear.