Hanka spread out upon the fence all the things she had washed, and ran to wake her people. But they were so heavy with sleep that their heads but just rose and fell back on the pillow. To her intense indignation, Pete shouted at her: “Mother of dogs!—’Tis too early! I’ll sleep till sunrise!” And he refused to stir. The babies were crying, and Yuzka whined: “Yet a little, Hanka dear! I went to bed but a minute ago!” She then lulled the little ones to rest, drove the poultry into the yard, waited patiently for a few minutes more, and then—just before the sun had risen, when the heights of heaven were one mass of flame, and the mill-pond reddened in the dawn—she returned to the charge, and made such a din and uproar that the sleepers could not but get out of bed. And when Vitek came scratching himself drowsily, and rubbing his back against the corner of the hut, she chastised him well with sharp words. “You’ll wake up fast enough with a first-rate drubbing!—Aye, and why, you young hound! why did you not fasten the kine to the mangers last night? Would you have them gore each other’s bellies in the dark, hey?” He answered her back, but whipped out of sight in time, for she made a fierce rush at him. Then, looking again into the stable, she set upon Pete: “The horses are mumbling their empty racks!—And you! you are lying abed even till sunrise! O you idle one!” “Ye scream as a magpie ere it is to rain,” he growled back. “Why, all the village can hear your noise!” “Let them hear! Let them all know what a sluggard, what a lazy drone, what a dawdler you are!—Oh, but the master will be back now, and he’ll keep you in order, I promise you!” “Yuzka!” she now shouted from the other end of the yard. “Spotted One’s udders are swollen hard: milk her carefully, and let not half the milk remain, as you did last time.—Vitek! take your breakfast and be off; and if you let the sheep stray—as you did yesterday—I’ll know the reason why!”... So she went about, giving orders, bustling everywhere, and all the time hard at work herself: feeding the fowls, and the swine that were standing close to the cabin; giving a pail of thin batter to drink to the calf just weaned; throwing the ducklings boiled groats, and driving them off to the mill-pond. Vitek received a slap on the back, and his food in a wallet. Nor was the stork forgotten; she set a pipkin before him, full of potatoes cooked the day before; and he _klek-kleked_, plunged his beak in, and ate with a hearty appetite. Hanka was everywhere, and seeing to everything, and managing all in the best way. As soon as Vitek had gone off with the cows and sheep, she went over to Pete, whom she could not bear to see idling about. “Take all the dung out of the byre!” she ordered; “it is bad for the cows at night, and fouls them all over: they’re as filthy as swine.”