Page:Balkan Short Stories.djvu/182

170 “How do I know? I don’t want to. Do you know what village people say? They say that in the spinning room many things are spun besides yarn. They say, too, that the girl who laughs in the spring, weeps in the fall. But I jest and laugh. But my father says a peasant has no reason to laugh. I suppose he means because of the land-measuring.”

“You mean the commensuration?”

“Something like that.”

“What business is that of yours, Naja? That’s an affair of men—not women.

“True. But I can talk of it with you, if I don’t with others. I have heard—everyone says so in the village—that our pope has plotted with the indznir to give the old graveyard to the rich estate owners—and to give the peasants a new one somewhere in the forest.”

“Well! That does not concern you, does it?”

“Why doesn’t it? My ancestors, my grandfather and my great grandfather are there. That graveyard has belonged to our race ever since we came from Bosnia, and now the land-owners want to