She went on scolding the insolent fellow, while she carried the loaves of dough into the porch, or flung the logs into the oven, or looked after the children. But the labour and the intense heat were wearing her out terribly; for it was stiflingly hot within and in the passage on account of the fire in the oven. The flies, too, that swarmed on every wall, were so insupportable that she almost wept with rage as she beat them off with a branch, all streaming with perspiration, exasperated, and ever more impatient and slower at her work. She was just patting the last loaf into shape for the oven, when Pete prepared to drive out of the yard. “Wait a moment and take your afternoon meal!” “Whoa!—Yes, I may as well: my stomach is empty enough after dinner.” “Had you too little to eat?” “The food is so wretched, it goes through the bowels as through a sieve.” “There’s insolence for you! What, you must have meat? And am I munching sausages in corners, say? No other farmers can at this season give their men what you get. Look at the _Komorniki_, how they feed!” She set down in the porch a pot of sour milk and a loaf, and he began to cram himself gluttonously, now and again flinging a morsel of bread to the stork, that had hurried in from the orchard, and stood now, like a dog, watching him eat. “Poor stuff.—As thin as buttermilk,” he grumbled, when pretty well filled. “Naught less than cream would do for you, belike? Wait till you get some!” When he could eat no more and had taken the reins to start, she said to him sarcastically: “Take service with Yagna; she will fatten you!” “Surely. When she ruled here, no one starved in the hut!” And he gave the horse a stroke with the whip, and the cart a push with his shoulder, to set it in motion. He had wounded her to the quick, but was off before she could find words to answer him. The swallows were twittering under the thatch, and a flock of pigeons alighted cooing in the porch. She drove them away; and then, hearing a grunt, rushed out, fearing her pigs were at the onion-bed. Fortunately, it was but the neighbour’s sow, rooting beneath the fence. “Just put your snout inside our enclosure, and I shall dispose of you in a fine way!” But no sooner was she returning to work than the stork hopped on to the porch, lurked about there for a moment, cocked first his right eye at the loaves, then his left ... and set to dig into the dough, swallowing it by large morsels! Uttering a loud cry, she rushed at him. He fled away with wide-open beak, making frantic efforts to get the dough down; but when she caught up with him to give him a beating, he flew up and alighted on the top of the barn, where he remained for a long time, rapping out his _klek-klek_ and wiping the dough from his beak on the thatch. “O you thief! let me but catch you, and I’ll shatter you to bits!” she threatened, filling up the hollows the stork’s beak had made. Yuzka came in then, and all Hanka’s anger was poured forth on her.