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Sweet Darusya
come back from work. As far
as work goes, he’s not smart:
till now he’s been working
for people. Chopping wood,
settingout foundations,doing
woodwork. In the village they
often hire Mykhailo: without
any worry they can even let
him into their root cellars,
and he won’t tell a lie, and
he hasn’t got a sharp tongue,
even when he is asked to,
and he won’t cheat, and he
charges reasonably. Andwhat
great woodwork he did – no
one could compete with him
from the time Petro Tsiptsiar
died – the woodworker and
carpenter for ten villages all
at the same time.
That summer Mykhailo was
putting up fence stakes in
the mountain pasture of the
Cheremoshne caretaker Illya
Dzhuryak, called Ilashka by
the locals, so he would come
home from the mountains
just on Sunday. And his wife in
the village would take care of
the household. There wasn’t
too much to the household,
but there was already a
little: a cow, a pig, chickens,
and three sheep. It’s true,
they didn’t have much land
besides what was near the
house and in the garden,
but Mykhailo girded himself
with work like the rings on a
barrel, intending to buy from
Zaremba the miller a few
acres of woods in Didkova
Yama. He already even gazed
at that expensive green patch
so that he sometimes saw it
in his dreams.
But for the time being
Matronka chased out all the
cud-chewing animals before
dawn to graze in themeadows
above the Cheremosh River,
and she has a peaceful mind
till evening. Around sunset,
she carried the cradle into