“Thou, thou!” said the old man.
“And shall I grow up to be a knight?”
“Surely thou wilt, for there is good soldier blood in thee. God grant thee to be like thy father; for if brave thou wilt not tease so much—understand me?”
“Tell how many men has Papa killed?”
“It’s little if I have told thee a hundred times! Easier for thee to count the leaves on this linden-tree than all the enemies which thy father and I have destroyed. If I had as many hairs on my head as I myself have put down, the barbers in Lukovsk would make fortunes just in shaving my temples. I am a rogue if I li—”
Here Pan Zagloba—for it was he—saw that it did not become him to adjure or swear before little boys, though in the absence of other listeners he loved to tell even the children of his former triumphs; he grew silent this time especially because the fish had begun to spring up in the pond with redoubled activity.
“We must tell the gardener,” said he, “to set the net for the night; a great many fine fish are crowding right up to the bank.”
Now that door of the house which led into the garden opened, and in it appeared a woman beautiful as the midday sun, tall, firm, black-haired, with bloom on her brunette face, and eyes like velvet. A third boy, three years old, dark as an agate ball, hung to her skirt. She, shading her eyes with her hand, looked in the direction of the linden-tree. This was Pani Helena Skshetuski, of the princely house of Bulyga-Kurtsevich.
Seeing Pan Zagloba with Yaremka and Longinek under the tree, she went forward a few steps toward the ditch, full of water, and called: “Come here, boys! Surely you are plaguing Grandfather?”
“How plague me! They have acted nicely all the time,” said the old man.