Opanas was a good peasant, but the poor fellow sorely loved vodka. Whenever he dressed up to go anywhere Kharko would be sure to call to him from his look-out at the inn-door:
“Won’t you drink a little mugful, Opanas? What’s your hurry?”
And Opanas would drink it.
Then, when he had crossed the dam and reached the village, the miller himself would call to him from the door of the other tavern:
“Won’t you come in and have a little mugful, Opanas? What’s the hurry?”
And Opanas would have another drink there. First thing you knew he would turn home without having been anywhere else at all.
Yes, he was a good peasant, but fate had ordained him always to fall between the two taverns. And yet he was a merry fellow and was always singing songs. That is man’s nature. When he has drunk up everything he possesses and knows that an angry wife is waiting for him at home, he will make up a song and think he has got rid of his troubles. And so it was with Opanas. He was lying in his wagon singing so loudly that even the frogs jumped into the water as he drove up, and this was his song:
“Oxen, oxen, how you crawl,
Walking down the road;
If I stood up, I should fall,