To make matters worse, the weather grew excessively hot: July weather in May. The sun rose in the very East, a vast fire in the azure: on every height, in all sandy soil, the vegetables drooped and faded. The grass was sear and burnt upon the fallows; and the potato-plants, which had at first sprouted well, hardly covered the ground with their poor puny shoots. The autumn-sown lands were alone to suffer little; being already in the ear, they grew splendidly and very high: the low cottages they surrounded seemed to have shrunk yet lower, crouching earthwards with only their roofs well above the forest of waving corn. The nights being so hot and sultry that it was painful to lie in the huts, people slept in the orchards. As a consequence of the great heats, of those troubles which beset them in troops, and also of the hard times preceding the harvest (harder than usual that year), it came to pass that the people of Lipka quarrelled and fought among themselves more than ever. Everyone seemed to enjoy thwarting his neighbour, and life there became a real torment. From the peep of day, the village rang with bickerings and angry words, some new contest taking place every day. Now it was Kobus and his wife, who had such a set-to that the priest had to go and rebuke and reconcile them; now Balcerek’s wife, who came to blows with Gulbas over a pig that had strayed into her carrot-patch; now Ploshkova, who had a row with the Soltys, on account of their goslings’ getting mixed: besides countless wrangles about the children, or unneighbourly behaviour, or anything that could serve for a squabble and outcries and noisy invectives. There seemed to be a curse on the village, bringing no end of altercations, breaches of the peace, and lawsuits. Ambrose even made fun of this waspish disposition before strangers. “This year times are not so very hard for me before harvest, by the goodness of Providence! No one dies, no one is born, no one is married; but they daily offer me vodka, and flatter me, and beg me to bear witness for them! Let them but wrangle so a few years more, and I shall have drunk myself to death!” Lipka was in a bad way indeed; but things went worst of all at Dominikova’s. Simon had returned with the others, Andrew’s leg was well now; they were not in sore straits as others were, and things ought to have gone on as of old. Far from it! Her sons would no longer obey her. They were grown rebellious, always at loggerheads with her, objected to being beaten, and refused to do woman’s work! “Ye must hire a maidservant,” they said tartly, “or do the work yourself.” Now Dominikova had ruled them with a rod of iron, and tyrannized over them for many a year; so she was very much shocked to see her own children rise up against her now.