“If he is not right, we will part. But when he applied, I chose to give the place to him. In three days he is to begin. Meanwhile, I have advanced a month’s salary; he needed it.”
“Was he destitute?”
“It seems so. There is an old Zavilovski,—that one who has a daughter, a very wealthy man. I asked our Zavilovski if that was a relative of his; he said not, but blushed, so I think that the old man is his relative. But how it is with us? A balance in nothing. Some deny relationship because they are poor; others, because they are rich. All through some fancy, and because of that rascally pride. But he’ll please thee; he pleased my wife.”
“Who pleased thy wife?” asked Pani Bigiel, coming in.
“Zavilovski.”
“For I read his beautiful verses entitled, ‘On the Threshold.’ At the same time he looks as if he were hiding something from people.”
“He is hiding poverty, or rather, poverty was hiding him.”
“No; he looks as if he had passed through some severe disappointment.”
“Thou wert able to see in him a romance, and to tell me that he had suffered much. Thou wert offended when I put forth the hypothesis that it might be from worms in childhood, or scald-head. That was not poetical enough for her.”
Pan Stanislav looked at his watch, and was a little impatient.