“Seeing that there is no great hurry,” said Joseph, “I think that you alone might manage to make them.”
“Be it so, be it so”; said old Loyka with a laugh.
“And I have to make straw bands? I have to be like a day labourer?”
“Like a day labourer? Surely you know that we all buckle to at harvest time?” said Joseph.
“Just so. But how pray? Am not I then still hospodar. Do you know, my dear son, that I never did such menial offices?”
“If you are not willing to work, good. It is easy to see that you are but a half-hearted hospodar when you shirk in this manner.”
“It is the duty of the hospodar to act as overseer; others can do manual work,” explained old Loyka.
“As for being overseer, that am I,” said Joseph.
“And I am like the fifth wheel on a carriage,” exclaimed Loyka angrily. But Joseph, just as if no words had passed between them, had already departed and left his father with a swarm of thoughts, so that he seemed to have his head full of drones and wasps. After this the father looked to heaven, and called aloud in an explosion of bitterness “Lord God! grant me some inspiration that I may make this cruel son aware that I am his father.”
“Drop a little rat’s bane into his well,” murmured the voice of the irrepressible Vena. “Unless you
