He stopped suddenly when he saw the grey eyes of the schoolmaster's daughter fixed on him. She offered him the glass of beer she had been drinking from.
'You are wet through,' she said. 'Take a good pull.'
'I don't want it,' said the boy, and felt ashamed directly; it did not seem well-mannered to speak rudely to one so beautiful.
'I might get tipsy…' he cried, but drained the glass, looked at her again and blushed so deeply that the girl smiled sadly as she looked at him.
At that moment violins and cellos struck up; Wilhelm Hamer came heavily bounding along and took the girl away to dance. Her yearning eyes once more rested on Jendrek's face.
He felt that something strange was happening to him. A terrible anger and sorrow gripped him by the throat; he wanted to throw himself on Wilhelm and tear his flowered waistcoat off his back; at the same time he wanted to cry aloud. Suddenly he turned to go.
'Are you going?' asked the schoolmaster. 'Give my compliments to your father.'
'And you can tell him from me that I have rented the field by the river from Midsummer Day,' Hamer called after him.
'But dad rented it from the squire!' Hamer laughed…'The squire! We are the squires now, and the field is mine.'
As Jendrek neared the road he came upon a peasant, hidden behind a bush, who had been watching. It was Gryb.