"He begrudges his uncle the grub he eats," shrieked the old cat of a cook.
"I'd have given you something, but the proud man should be punished," said the wrathful priest, growing purple in the face.
"Oh, uncle, my children!" sobbed the poor man.
"What business has a man to have a brood of brats when he can't earn enough to buy bread for them?" said the cook, aloud, to herself.
"Will you hold your tongue, you cantankerous old cat?" said the smith to the cook.
The old vixen began to howl, and the priest, in his anger, cursed his nephew, telling him that he and his children could starve for all he cared.
The smith thereupon went home, looking as piteous as a tailless turkey-cock; and while his children slept and, perhaps, dreamt of kolaci, he told his wife the failure he had met with.
"Your uncle is a brute," said she.
"He's a priest, and all priests are brutes, you know."
"Well, I don't know about all of them, for I heard my great-grandmother say that once upon a time there lived——"