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Mrs. Tiralla rejoiced to think that she had so easily got rid of the schoolmaster. It would have been so tiresome if he had returned with her. She ran through the gate with a light heart.
The stillness of evening lay over the farm. The pigeons that had their cot on the high pole near the pond were already sitting huddled together on the perch in front of their door, cooing softly. How tender it sounded; it seemed to Mrs. Tiralla as though it had never sounded so tender before. And the cock was strutting about among his hens; the woman thought she could see that he particularly wished to please the white hen. A couple of early white butterflies, the first heralds of approaching spring, were fluttering about, exhausted by their amorous dalliance. Mother stork was standing on her nest on the old barn; the couple had returned the day before in renewed love to the home they had left last autumn. Marianna was crouching on the doorstep peeling potatoes for supper, and quite close to her stood Mikolai with his back against the wall and his hands in his trouser pockets, looking down with a smile at the girl's firm brown neck that showed above her white frill.
How beautiful everything was! Mrs. Tiralla closed her eyes as though dazzled, then opened them wide with a dreamy expression and gave a deep sigh full of longing. Everything spoke of love. What did it matter if the butterflies were dead by to-morrow morning, if they were found lying on the ground like small, withered leaves, killed by the night that was still so raw? Had they not spent a merry hour, disporting themselves at love's fair game? She looked round; where was Martin Becker? Had he not returned from the fields with Mikolai?
"Heigh!" Her voice sounded shrill as she called to her stepson. "Where are the others? Your friend and Rosa?"
"I don't know," answered the young man in a calm voice, and went on philandering with the maid, in spite of his stepmother's arrival. He had got hold of a long straw, with which he was tickling her neck, and which he quickly hid behind his back whenever she let the potato-knife fall and laughingly tried to seize it.
Where could Martin and Rosa be? They were not in the room downstairs, for she had looked in at the low window. She gazed around with burning, impatient eyes; where had they hidden themselves? All at once she felt disgusted with the two flirting on the doorstep. Were they not ashamed of themselves? She tore the straw angrily out of her stepson's hand and pulled it to pieces. "Stop that nonsense," she said sharply, frowning. "Go in, Marianna, dalej, don't lounge there any longer. When Mr. Tiralla comes home we are to have supper, dalej."
Disturbed in her amusement, the maid, who was still quite hot from laughing, murmured sullenly, "The master hasn't been out at all; he's in the house. That man was here"--she turned up her nose--"the schoolmaster from Starawieś. I had to bring some bottles up from the cellar, and they've been drinking beer and gin. Now the master has gone to bed and is asleep." She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head as she tripped away.
"Father drinks," said Mikolai, his laughing face all at once overcast. "He never drank before, why does he do so now?"
He looked at his stepmother inquiringly; he felt as though he must demand an explanation of her. How could she allow him to drink so much? And it was not only beer and wine, for a short time before, when he had gone to the pig-market in Gnesen, he had brought gin back with him, a whole keg of clear gin, some bad stuff made of potatoes, like that given to reapers at harvest-time. And he drank it off as if it were small beer. "Tell me how it is that father has so changed," he continued, in a voice that sounded quite rough. "He used to be so lively formerly. He has always been fond of a drink--who wouldn't be?--but still he never took more than he could stand. But now!" He shook his head, and his glance seemed to Mrs. Tiralla to have suddenly grown suspicious. "I don't know how it's happened."