Page:Korolenko - Makar's Dream and Other Stories.djvu/273

Rh it. The people bowed low before their icons, but they bowed lower before my friend.

And yet he never could get enough. He went about as surly and angry as if a puppy were worrying his heart, thinking to himself all the time:

"Everything is wrong in this world, everything is wrong! Somehow money doesn't make a man as happy as it ought to."

Kharko once asked him:

"Why do you go about looking as cross as if some one had thrown a bucket of slops over you, master? What does my master want?"

"Perhaps if I got married I should be happier."

"Then go ahead and get married."

"That's just the trouble. How can I get married when the thing's impossible no matter how I tackle it? I'll tell you the truth: I fell in love with Galya, the widow's daughter, before I ever came to be a miller and while I was still a workman at the mill. If my uncle hadn't got drowned I should be married to her to-day. But now you see yourself that she is below me."

"Of course, she is below you! All you can do now is to marry rich old Makogon's daughter Motria."

"There you are! I can see for myself and every one says that my money and old Makogon's would just match, but there you are again—the girl is so ugly. She sits all day like a great bale of hay everlastingly hulling seeds. Every time I look at her I