set everything to rights just as he had reconciled himself with Kubista.
Kubista now stood his friend once more. He often visited him behind the barn under the lindens, and seated there on the grass they lightened each other’s sorrows.
The starlings in the trees had much to say to one another, but still they had exhausted themselves ere these neighbours of “auld lang syne” turned homewards again together.
Grandfather also little by little adapted himself to his fate. He hardly ever complained the least, but learnt to look upon his present circumstances as if they had been so all his life, and were not amenable to change.
He seldom went now to the living room to see his daughter-in-law; nor did it ever occur to him that he might yet be reinstated there. Indeed, it would even have been a source of grief to him if he had been recalled thither. It had been a hard struggle to disaccustom himself to that room, but now it seemed to him that by being established there he would also put on all his long past frailties.
Terinka was at times thorougly out of health. She was sallow, little inclined to move about, and more like a specimen preserved under a glass case than an animated being. Uncle John did not experience much pleasure in her company; however, he did not look for much pleasure of this kind. Even the child which was born to them, and which Terinka always dressed in the finest clothes, awakened in him no special delight. ’Twas seldom he even smiled at it.
Sometimes he would follow grandfather to his pension house to talk over old times, but what they said on these occasions was of trifling value. It touched upon topics of merely general interest.
