“Yes, it is, Zalia, but I’d like to go to sleep, I’m feeling cold now and I’ve got needles sticking into my side ... here, see?”
And he pressed both his hands on the place.
“Yes, you’re better in bed; it’ll be gone in the morning and we’ll fetch in the corn.”
“Is it cut?”
“All done and stooked; if it keeps fine to-morrow, we’ll get it all into the barn.”
Zalia lifted him under his armpits and they crawled on like that into the other room, where the loom stood with the bed behind it. She helped him take off his jacket and trousers and put him to bed, tucked him nicely under the blanket and put his night-cap on his head.
Then she went and lit the fire in the hearth, hung up the pot with the goat’s food, washed the potatoes and sat down to peel them for supper.
She had not peeled three, when she heard Zeen bringing up.
“That’s the oil, it’ll do him good,” she thought and, fetching a can of water from outside, gave him a bowl to drink.
Then she went back to her peeling. A bit later, she sat thinking of other remedies—limeflowers, sunflower-seeds, pearl barley, flowers of sulphur—when suddenly she saw Mite Kornelje go by. She ran out and called: