Page:Albert Rhys Williams - Through the Russian Revolution (1921).djvu/80

54 household of Ivan Ivanov. Everybody was busy there. Avdotia was twisting straw into bands to bind the sheaves. Tatyana was plaiting strips of bark and shaping them into sandals. Olga, Avdotia's elder child, was forcibly teaching the cat to drink tea. Ivan sharpened the scythes, and we all set out for the fields.

At this move the young people came out of the izbas. "Please don't go to the fields. Stay at home," they teased. As we proceeded they became quite serious. I asked why we should not go.

"If one family starts for the fields all the others follow," they said. "Then our holiday fun will be over. Please don't go!"

But the ripened harvest was calling. The sun was shining, and there was no telling how soon the rains would fall. So Ivan marched along, and when, fifteen minutes later, we reached a rise of ground, we looked back to see the paths dotted with black figures making for the fields. Like a beehive the village was sending out its workers to garner its food-stores for the oncoming winter. As we reached the rye-field Yanishev quoted from Nekrassov's national epic, Who Can Be Happy and Free in Russia?

"You full yellow cornfields! To look at you now One would never imagine How sorely God's people Had toiled to array you. 'Tis not by warm dewdrops