I.
The last gleam of the sun is dying away, and the air is terribly sharp. It seems as if the barren fields were shivering with cold. The neighboring chimneys send out puffs of smoke, which are swiftly whirled away by the icy north wind that leaves some snow-flakes in exchange. The startled black-bird chirps complainingly from her perch on the wall, or calls anxiously to her mate from the top of an apple-tree. From time to time is heard the melancholy and monotonous cry of the laborer calling his cattle; occasionally the scurrying of wooden shoes over the stones in the alley is perceived, and you need listen no longer, for no other sound indicates that there is any life in that pale and somber landscape.
In the broad porch of one of the houses that adorn it are two little chaps stretched out upon a heap of dried rushes. They are lying on their stomachs, their faces rest upon their hands, and they are looking into each other's eyes. As they have passed the afternoon frolicking over the yielding material upon which they are now resting, to overcome the cold which they scarcely feel, poorly clad as they are, they need only to blow upon their fingers from time to time.
One of the boys belongs in the house; the other, next door. It is the first one who suddenly exclaims:
"I'm going to have fritters to eat, aha!"
"So am I, too," replies the other.
"But I'm going to have honey with mine."
"I'll have something better than that—sugar!"
"Well, in our house we're going to have a meat stew and some wheat bread to go with it."
"My father brought yesterday two fishes—tremendous big ones!"
"My mother is down in the town now to get some lard, some wheat bread, and some cake, and this noon my father brought two jars of white wine, the very best kind. And all the eggs we've had this week are kept for to-day, more than fifteen, as big as that! I tell you what, we're going to spend to-night all of a dollar and thirty-five cents which are saved up!"
"What does all that amount to! Why, my father brought up from the harbor four dollars, and forty cents besides, and we're going to lay out the whole of it to-night. I say, will you keep a taste of the stew for me, if I'll give you a piece of the fish?"
"You needn't think I care anything about that! But you have not got a brother who is a student and who is coming home on a vacation this very afternoon, the way I have."
"But I have got a splendid young bull, and a cow that gives three quarts of milk. Oh, what a lot of it we've got for to-night!"
"Milk, did you say! Do you want to see two jars of milk right away? I'll show you some worth looking at."
Up springs the eager boy, with the other one after him, and together they go into the kitchen, looking cautiously about lest Uncle Jeromo, the master of the establishment, should be anywhere about.
The evening is already coming on, and the boy of the house catches up a brand from the hearth. By dint of much blowing upon it he produces a flickering flame, and by its light they go up to a smoke-begrimed chest that stands underneath a shelf, also blackened by smoke. They raise the cover, and there on the bottom, between heaps of flour, bran, and half of a ham, are seen two large jars filled with milk. The boy of the house looks at his friend with an air of triumph. Both of them fasten their eager eyes upon the jars. Both of them stretch out their right hand, and both moisten their forefinger in the milk, each in his own jar. Continuing to move as if by a common impulse, they draw their arms out of the chest, and stand face to face, sucking their fingers.
"That's good milk!" says the boy of the house.
"It's better cream, though," replies his comrade.
"Did you get the cream?"
"What do you suppose! I got up every bit of it on my finger."
At that moment the former recalls with alarm the fearful disturbance his father makes whenever the cream is missing from the daily supply of milk, and remembers the witness to such troubles left on his own ribs by his father's hand. For that reason, fearing a fresh drubbing, and in order to make his own innocence perfectly clear, he flings the brand into the fire, grasps his friend by the trousers, and begins to call out in a tone of the greatest anguish:
"Father! Father!"
But the sybaritic prisoner, seized with mortal terror, gives a terrific twist to his jailer's hands, and scuttles out through the yard, licking his chops.