'I say!' cried Slimakowa, 'he is quite one of the party! Just look, how he is running along with the line, as if he had never done anything else in his life. He has never seen a book except in the Jew's shop window, and yet he can run better than any of them. I wish I had told him to put on his boots; they will never take him for the son of a gospodarz.'
She watched Jendrek with great pride until the party disappeared behind the line of the hill.
'Something will come of this,' said Slimak, 'either good or bad.'
'Why should it be bad?' asked his wife; 'they may add to our land; what do you think, Maciek?'
The farm labourer looked embarrassed when he was asked for his opinion, and pondered until the perspiration flowed from his head.
'Why should it be good?' he said at last. 'When I was working for the squire at Krzeszowie, and he went bankrupt, just such men as these came and measured the land, and soon afterwards we had to pay a new tax. No good ever comes of anything new.'
Jendrek returned towards sunset, quite out of breath. He called out to his mother that the gentlemen wanted some milk, and had given him twenty kopeks.
'Give them to your mother at once,' said Slimak; 'they are not for you, but for the milk.'
Jendrek was almost in tears. 'Why should I give up my money? They say they will pay for everything they have, and even want to buy butter and fowls.'
'Are they traders?'