“I thank you from my heart!” said Pan Michael, kissing her hand; “for I have great need of consolation.”
“I know, I know,” repeated the young lady; “I am an orphan myself.” Here a small tear rolled down from her eyelid and stopped at the down on her lip.
Pan Michael looked on that tear, on the mouth slightly shaded, and said, “You are as kind as a real angel; I feel comforted already.”
Krysia smiled sweetly: “May God reward you!”
“As God is dear to me.”
The little knight felt meanwhile that if he should kiss her hand a second time, it would comfort him still more; but at that moment his sister appeared. “Basia took the shuba,” said she, “but is in such confusion that she will not come in for anything. Pan Zagloba is chasing her through the whole stable.”
In fact, Zagloba, sparing neither jests nor persuasion, not only followed Basia through the stable, but drove her at last to the yard, in hopes that he would persuade her to the warm house. She ran before him, repeating, “I will not go! Let the cold catch me! I will not go! I will not go!”
Seeing at last a pillar before the house with pegs, and on it a ladder, she sprang up the ladder like a squirrel, stopped, and leaned at last on the eave of the roof. Sitting there, she turned to Pan Zagloba and cried out half in laughter, “Well, I will go if you climb up here after me.”
“What sort of a cat am I, little haiduk, to creep along roofs after you? Is that the way you pay me for loving you?”
“I love you too, but from the roof.”