Dinner was not ready at home. He scolded his sister for dawdling, and went in to Teresa, who was milking in the orchard, and raised to him very sad tearful eyes. “Whimpering again? And wherefore?” She excused herself, looking on him fondly. “Pay more attention: the udder squirts milk upon your petticoat.” Why was he so unkind, so hard to her to-day? she wondered. What had come over him? She was as gentle as could possibly be; yet he snapped her up fiercely at every word she said. He seemed looking about the orchard for something, but ever and anon flung a furtive glance at her, and wondered more and more. “Where had I mine eyes?... Such a paltry flabby thing!... Neither beauty nor savour!... Raw-boned and sour-tasting!... Black as a gipsy, too; and of carriage, none whatever!” True, her eyes, and they alone, were beautiful; perhaps as much so as Yagna’s: large, bright as a blue sky, and peering under black brows. But as often as he met them, he turned aside and swore softly to himself. “She rolls her eyes like a calf!” Those looks of hers made him impatient and angry. “I will not see them, I will not!—Yes, yes, ogle as much as you like, ye will not catch me.” They had dinner together, but he never spoke once to her, nor so much as glanced in her direction. To Nastka he spoke, indeed, but no pleasant words. “A dog would not touch these groats: they are disgustingly burnt!” “Only a little: just enough to have a taste.” “Do not cross me!—And ye have put more flies than bacon-scratchings in them!” “What, do you object to flies now? Don’t be so very dainty! They will not poison you.” The cabbage dish, he then complained, had been cooked with rancid lard. “Ye might as well have seasoned it with axle-grease!” “You don’t know how that would taste? I do not, nor will I try,” she returned sharply. But he continued to seek every occasion to grumble. Teresa was dumb all the time; so he set at her directly after dinner, seeing her cow rubbing herself at the corner of the hut. “She’s filthy with dung, crusted all over: can ye not rub her down?” “Our byre is wet, and she gets dirty there.” “Wet, indeed!” he vociferated. “There are pine-boughs enough in the forest for dry fodder: but ye must wait for someone to collect them and bring them here to you. And the beasts might rot their flanks off with the dung meanwhile.—So many women in the hut, yet not a stiver’s worth of cleanliness!” But Teresa never answered back; she durst not defend herself, and only begged his mercy with her eyes. She was quiet and obedient, and as hard-working as an ant: she felt even glad to see him so masterful and high-handed with her! Which was precisely what angered him yet more. Those loving timorous eyes enraged him; so did her quiet footsteps, her humble mien, her way of following him about. He was on the point of crying out: “Away from my sight!”