threshold, will you?” said the young mistress with such precision, that he whom it touched did not venture to reply.
Still, all the same, one of the musicians ventured to plead an excuse. “But our good old master ordered us to play here”, said he in exculpation of himself and his companions.
“You lie!” said Barushka. “Your good old master never orders anything which I do not like. Just be gone from here in double quick time.”
The musicians did not finish their performance nor did they finish what they had further wished to say; old Loyka stood as though a stream of hot water was running down his back, and Loyka’s aged wife, had it not been the very day of the wedding, would, perhaps have stoutly seconded her lord and master.
The musicians did not finish their performance, and trailed like draggled chickens across the court-yard toward the coach-house, and entered their two chambers.
“And that is a pretty welcome”, said they to one another.
“Truly, she begins wondrous well”, they murmured.
“This is something new on the estate”, they added.
Loyka’s aged wife still could not bring herself to believe that the new bride wished so ruthlessly to abolish on the very threshold of her new life what had been for so long a series of years a speciality of the family. “When you danced here at your grandfather’s funeral I did not think, Barushka, that you were an enemy to music”, said she with a certain asperity.
“I cannot stand things where they are out of place”, replied Barushka with yet greater asperity. “Music is in its place at an ale-house, not at such a farm as this. I could not endure to live under the same roof with a pack of strolling scamps, with whom one loses caste, because that class of menials deems itself our equal. And a dubious light is thrown on the management of an estate which fosters vagabonds.”
Here Loyka’s aged wife recognized to her surprise that a crisis had come [lit., the sickle had come to the grindstone] and that she must not easily yield.
“We hand over the estate to you in excellent order, and it would be well if there were never any worse things to complain of”, said she.
“Still, for my part, I could not bear to live in a building where everybody thought that he had the right of entrance, just as though it was an ale-house. Joseph will see to it that this rabble
