'You'll pay the thirty-five paper roubles and the silver rouble for the
halter! Week after week, month after month you have been putting by
your money, and to-day you'll spend it all as if you were cracking a
nut. You will swell Grochowski's pockets and your own pouch will be
empty. You will wait in fear and uncertainty at the manor and bow to
the bailiff when it pleases him to give you the receipt for your
rent!...

'Perhaps the squire won't even let me have the field.'

'Don't talk nonsense!' twittered the sparrows; 'you know quite well
that he'll let you have it.'

'Oh yes, he'll let me have it,' he retorted hotly, 'for my good money.
I would rather bear a severe pain than waste money on such a foolish
thing.'

The sun was low by the time Slimak had finished his last bit of
harrowing near the highroad. At the moment when he stopped he heard the
new cow low. Her voice pleased him and softened his heart a little.

'Three cows is more than two,' he thought, 'people will respect me
more. But the money... ah well, it's all my own fault!'

He remembered how many times he had said that he must have another cow
and that field, and had boasted to his wife that people had encouraged
him to carve his own farm implements, because he was so clever at it.

She had listened patiently for two or three years; now at last she took