So it went on till they came to a house where a wedding was being celebrated. When the wedding-guests heard Reinecke’s song they came out of the house and praised his singing. Thereupon he said that he could sing a better song than that if they would let him go into the house and up into the loft. To this they agreed.
When Isegrim, with all the trouble in the world, had carried Reinecke up into the loft, which was floored only with loose planks, then Reinecke opened all the places he had plugged up, and the water ran out of Isegrim’s eyes and ears and nose and poured down through the cracks upon the wedding-guests below. The guests ran nimbly up into the loft, but Reinecke still more nimbly made his escape through the window, while Isegrim was half-beaten to death by the enraged wedding-guests and his body thrown out into the road.
Then Reinecke came creeping back and taunted Isegrim. “This long time I have been wearing out shoe-leather to get the best of you, because you ate up my colt!”
And with these words away he went, leaving Isegrim to his fate.
“That served Isegrim right,” said the little boy. “He had no business to eat up Reinecke’s little colt.”
CHAPTER VII
THE SNOWY DAY
The grandmother sat in her room spinning, and singing a sad little song. Grandmother’s songs were always sad, for that is the way with the songs of the Russian peasant women, whose lives are very hard. But the little boy had never heard any other kind, and he was very fond of hearing his grandmother sing. He was lying on the stove, watching her spin, for it was still snowing, and he was tired of playing alone in the court. The snow was so deep now that none of the mothers would let their little children go into the street. The big children were all at work. Only little children play every day in Russia. The big children work, except on holidays.