“And all things have changed so wonderfully!” she sighed in ecstasy.—All the time they slept, she remained as in a sweet trance. She watched over them, as a hen does over her chickens; took the children far out into the orchard, lest they should awaken the sleepers; and drove all the animals out of the farm-yard, heedless if the pigs should root up the new potatoes, or the fowls go scratching over the sprouting cucumber-plants. The day was painfully long, but there was no help for that. Breakfast-time, dinner-time passed: still they slept. She sent all the people to work, caring little whether they should or should not be lazy, with her not by, and stood continually on the watch, or continually tripping between cabin and barn. And many, many a time did she take out the things he had brought her, and try them on, and cry out: “Is there in all the world another man so kind and so thoughtful as he is?” At last, however, she sped away to the village; and every woman she saw she accosted with: “Do ye know, my goodman has come back! He is sleeping in the barn now!” Her eyes and face were radiant with smiles; everything in her breathed such joy and exhilaration that they were all astounded. “What spell can that jail-bird have thrown over her? Why, she is beside herself about the man.” “She will grow proud and stuck-up in a very short time: you will see!” “Oh, but let Antek go back to his old ways again, and she will be taken down finely!” So they gossiped. Of all they said, she heard not one word.—She was back home presently, and preparing a first-class dinner. But hearing some geese scream in the pond, she ran out to silence them with a volley of stones; which nearly brought about a quarrel with the miller’s wife, their owner. She had scarcely sent the field-labourers their afternoon meal, when the two men came out of the barn. Dinner was spread for them in the cool shadow in front of the house. Beer and vodka were not lacking there, nor even a dessert—half a sieve full of ripe red cherries, brought from the priest’s house. “A noble dinner!” Roch said, smiling; “quite a wedding-feast!” “And should the Master’s return be a second-rate festival?” she answered, busily serving them, and eating very little herself. Dinner was hardly over, when Roch went out into the village, promising to look in again in the evening; and Hanka said to her husband: “Will you look at the farm?” “Certainly! My ‘holidays’ are over; I must buckle to work now.—God! how little did I think I should inherit my father’s land so soon!” He sighed, and followed her. She took him first to the stable, where three horses and a colt were snorting and stamping; then to the empty cow-byre, and the granary, full of new-mown hay. He looked into the sties too, and into the shed where all the various implements and tools were stored. “That _britzka_ must be taken in to the threshing-floor: its paint is peeling off with the heat here.”