“My dear, servants are never good for much. The miller’s wife told me she could not keep a single girl for six months.” “They get too much new bread there—and go wrong in consequence.” “That’s as it may be; but they have the journeyman to help them that way, or the son—him at school—who looks in at times; aye, and the miller himself will let none of them alone, they say.... ’Tis true that our servants grow bolder daily. My own herdsman, now the goodman is away, treats me shamefully and insists on milk in the afternoon! Who ever heard of such a thing?” “Oh, I know their humours, I have a man myself. But must agree to all he wants, else he would leave me when work is heaviest; and on such a large holding, what could I do without him?” “Have a care they do not take him from you!” she said, lowering her voice warningly. “Do ye know of anything intended?” Hanka exclaimed, greatly alarmed. “Something I heard of—a rumour, peradventure a lie: I cannot say.—But I talk and talk, and forget what I have come for. Several have promised to come to my cabin for a chat. Do you come too. All the best folk will be there: young Boryna’s wife must not be away.” This was flattering; but Hanka had to excuse herself, for she felt too unwell. Ploshkova, much annoyed, went to invite Yagna. She too pretexted a previous engagement with her mother. From outside the hut, Yagustynka’s mocking voice was heard: “Ye would fain have gone, Yagna, but ye are hankering after the lads, and there’s no one at Ploshkova’s but old fogies like Ambrose. No matter: they wear hose just the same as young men!” “You! every word you say is a stab—as usual!” “For I,” she jeered, “being merry, would that all might have their desires!” Trembling with rage, Yagna left the house, staring vacantly in front of her, and scarce able to choke down her tears. _It was true_; the longing she felt was intolerable. What though the very air told of the feast-day, and folk swarmed to and fro, and the village resounded with shouts of laughter, and echoed to the songs of women seen far away, crimson against the grey sown fields? She laboured none the less under a deep oppression, an unbearable sadness of craving, which she had been suffering ever since the morning. To drive it off, she had gone round to her acquaintances, taken long walks along the roads and meadows, even changed her clothes twice or thrice: all would not do. Still, and yet more intensely, did she pine to go somewhere, do something, seek ... she knew not what! And now she wandered out upon the poplar road, gazing at the huge red disk, slowly descending and throwing streaks of light and shadow athwart the highway. The cool of twilight soon began to envelop her, though the still warm breath of the plain filled her with a thrilling rhythmical sense of pleasure. The noises of the village came faintly to her ears, and the fiddle, wailing mournfully, smote upon her heart-strings.