She had a mind to get up and take a look outside; but her people were home now, and Yagustynka set about getting dinner ready. She meanwhile related how the church had been so crammed that half the people had to stand outside; how all the Manor folk had been there; and how his Reverence had, after Mass, called all the farmers to the sacristy to confer with them. Yuzka prattled about the way the young Manor ladies were dressed. “Know ye that the damsels of Vola wear humps on their hinder parts, and look like turkey-cocks when they put up their tails?” “They pad themselves with hay or rags,” the old woman explained. “But their waists! They are drawn in like wasps. One might cut them in two with a whip. And where they stow away their bellies, none can say! Oh, I was close to them, and saw them well!” “Their bellies? Why, they cram them in under their stays. A Manor servant, who had once been chambermaid at Modlitsa, told me that some of those damsels starve themselves, and gird their waists tight while they sleep, lest they should grow stout! At the Manors ’tis fashionable for girls to be thin as laths, with only the back parts swelled out!” “Not so with us; lads laugh raw-boned girls to scorn!” “They are right. Our lasses should be even as ovens, all rounded out and full of such heat flowing from them that men feel warm when they come near,” said Pete, his eyes feasting on Yagna, who then was removing the pots from the fire-place. “Why, I declare!” thundered Yagustynka; “that fright! He has just had a spell of rest and a morsel of meat; and lo, he is at once hankering for something else!” “When such a one is at work, it is a marvel her bodice does not split at every motion!” he went on; and would have served them some further specimens of his eloquence, when Dominikova, coming in to tend Hanka, drove him from the room. They took dinner outside in the porch, where it was bright and warm. The early verdure quivered and glittered on the boughs, fluttering like butterflies; and the warbling of birds came to them from the orchard-trees. Dominikova forbade Hanka to leave her bed. Veronka came in with her children immediately after dinner. A bench was placed close to the bed, and Yuzka brought in some portions of the Hallow-fare, and a flask of vodka sweetened with honey. Hanka, though not without difficulty, offered these (according to the dignified custom among peasants on such occasions) to her sister and to the neighbours who had dropped in to visit and sympathize, taste the vodka, nibble slowly at the sweet cakes, and talk of various topics—especially the hole dug to rob the store-room. Outside, too, folk had come to chat with the household, and walk to and fro in the orchard, much exercised in mind at the sight of the hole, which the Voyt had not allowed to be filled up till the arrival of the scrivener and gendarmes.