had your well frozen hard.’ At this he sat upright in astonishment just where he had been lying, and said, ‘Lord ha’ mercy! the well hard frozen in summer-time! No! I cannot remember it ever to have been hard-frozen in summer-time in my young day. The Lord God be with us!’”
At this all the neighbours laughed simple-hartedly, and each one confirmed by some instance the statement that old people like to discriminate between their times and ours. And now the mayor beckoned to the bystanders that they should step quite close to him. And then he said not very loud, “On this, I said to old Loyka, ‘Oh! grandfather, I am surprised to find that you do not know that you had your well hard-frozen in summer-time.’ ‘My dear good little gossip,’ says he, ‘for many a long year now I have not ventured to draw water from my son’s well; his peasant wife does not allow it.’” At these words a thrill of consternation ran through the group of listeners.
Vena, it is true, had not wound himself into the selecter circle, but, none the less, he exclaimed as though he had heard all that was said: “Not allow him to draw water! The frog retires that the dog may lap, and a son shuts his well against his own father.”
“You see he knows how to give names to things, and yet ’tis but a poor fool”, said the neighbours, and they thought wonderingly about the peasant proprietor, Loyka, although they had already heard about this affair of the well, and in fact from Vena himself.
“While I sat that day by the boundary-stone,” the mayor began again, “I inquired of Loyka, ‘Oh! grandfather, you can call to mind many a Kaiser this day, I take it.’ ‘I can call to mind Kaiser and gentry', replied Loyka. ‘I call to mind the time when Kaiser Joseph ploughed, and then I call to mind the time when all the gentry did it after him, only that the Kaiser ploughed with horses and the gentry with us.’”
Here the neighbours again laughed, and said, “What of that! he knew how to muster his parts of speech, and to give a slap in the face to high and low, only that he preferred to give it to the high and mighty.”
“I call to mind yet more”, said Vena, insinuating himself into the conversation. “I call to mind how that we plough one with another, and how that each hospodar laments that he cannot plough the field with his own father who is pensioned off. Oh! ye sons, what wouldn’t you give to have your wretched ‘tatas’ tugging at the plough.”
