“Can you not be quiet? Master is present!” Hanka said, reprovingly, carrying some water for the cow to drink. Antek took the vessel from her hands, and set it before the cow, saying with a laugh: “Screech away, Yuzka, screech away; you’ll drive all the rats off the premises in no time!” “I shall do just as I please!” she answered back sulkily, in a mood to quarrel. But as soon as they had gone by, she ceased her song, though she still eyed her brother askance, with a resentful sniff. Hanka, busy with the pigs, carried them so many heavy tubs of mash that he was sorry for her. “That is too hard work for you; let the lads carry them,” he said. “And I shall get you a wench besides; Yagustynka is of no more use to you than the whining of a dog!—Where is she now?” “Gone to her children, to make it up with them!—A wench? Well, one would be handy; but the expense!—I could manage things by myself. But let it be as you will have it.” It was surprising (so grateful she felt) that she did not kiss her husband’s hand. In great glee, she added: “And then I should be able to breed yet more geese, and fatten yet another swine for sale.” After revolving the matter in his mind, he came to this conclusion: “Now we have a farm of our own, we must behave as becomes our condition, and as our fathers have always done!” After supper, he went outside the hut, to receive his friends and acquaintances, who had come to welcome him back with great joy. “We were looking out for you,” Gregory said, “even as the kite looks out for rain.” “Ah, well, they kept me there, they kept me, that pack of wolves! and there was no getting away from them!” All sat down in the shadow of the hut. There were lights on every side, and bright stars overhead; the mill-pond murmured, moaning now and then; and all around it the people were enjoying the cool of the evening. Roch interrupted some commonplace talk with: “Know ye that the head official has decided there is to be an assembly here in a fortnight, to vote for a school?” “Is that our business?” young Ploshka cried. “Let our fathers see to it.” Gregory took him up sharply. “’Tis easy enough to lay all on our fathers’ backs, and lie lazily on our own! The reason things go so ill in the village is that none of us younger men will trouble about them.” “Let them make over their lands to us, and we will!” This was an opening for a dispute, when Antek suddenly interposed. “We certainly do need a school here; but we ought not to vote half a kopek for such a one as the head official would give us.” Roch seconded him strongly, urging them all to resist. “Ye will each vote a _zloty_, and have to pay a rouble.... What about the vote for the Law-Court Building, eh? They have fattened finely on your money; their bellies protrude with a vengeance!” “I am decidedly against the vote,” said Gregory, and, taking up some books, he went to study quietly by Roch’s side.