"Here am I, trying and working all I can, so that in case I return there may be something to live upon and I mayn't have to beg in my old age, and that fool----"
We both began to remonstrate with him that it was unnecessary to take this to heart, and that his son was probably--in fact, certainly--a very good lad, only perhaps a little spoilt, especially if he was the only child.
"Of course he is the only one, for I have never even seen him."
"Yes, really never; because--I remember it as if it were to-day--it was five o'clock in the evening. I was doing something in the backyard, when my neighbour, Kwiatkowski, called out to me from behind the wooden fence: 'God help you, Stanisław, for they are coming after you!' I only had time to run up to the window and call out: 'Good-bye, Basia; remember St. Stanisław will be his patron!' That's all I said. Basia was confined shortly after, but I didn't see her again. So it was a good thing I said it, for now there'll always be something to remember me by."
"God be praised that it's so! but if it hadn't been a son----"
Maciej did not finish his sentence, however, for the offended shoemaker began to reprimand him sternly.
"You are talking nonsense, Maciej, and it is not for the first time! Does not the Church also give the name of St. Stanisława? Besides, though I am a sinner as every man is, couldn't I guess that a word spoken at a moment like that would carry weight with the Almighty? Isn't everything in God's hand?"
Maciej looked down, and a deep sigh was the only testimony to the shoemaker's eloquence.
Stanisław's explanation of the circumstances lightened our task very much, and when he had remembered that the mother never complained of her son--on the contrary, was always satisfied with him--we succeeded in calming his excessive anxiety concerning the fate of his only child. In order to settle the matter thoroughly, it was decided to ask some responsible and enlightened person to examine the lad as he should think fit and to keep an eye on him in future, reporting the result of the examination to the father. This was arranged because the mother, being a simple and uneducated woman, was thought to be possibly much too fond of her only son, and an over-indulgent and blind judge. The only question was the choice of the individual--a sufficiently difficult matter; this one had died, that one had grown rich, the other had lately taken to drink. We meditated long, and would have meditated still longer, if finally the shoemaker had not said firmly, with the air of a man persuaded that he is speaking to the point: