Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 01.djvu/182

146 waving his whip, kept on staring at us meaninglessly, and gave us an answer only when it was not possible to hear him.

"What goods are these?" Vasíli turned to another wagon, in the fenced-off front part of which the driver lay under a new mat. A blond head with a red face and russet beard for a moment stuck out from the mat, with an indifferent, contemptuous look gazed at our calash, and again hid itself. It occurred to me that the drivers could not make out who we were, and whither and whence we were travelling.

For an hour and a half I was absorbed in various observations, and paid no attention to the crooked figures on the verst-posts. But now the sun began to glow more warmly upon my head and back, the road grew more dusty, the three-cornered lid of the tea-box annoyed me more and more, and I several times changed my position: I felt warm, uncomfortable, and tired. All my attention was turned to the verst-posts and the figures upon them. I made all kinds of mathematical calculations in regard to the time when we should arrive at the station. "Twelve versts are one third of thirty-six, and to Líptsy is forty-one versts, consequently we have travelled one third, and how much?" and so forth.

"Vasíli," said I, when I noticed that he was beginning to nod on his box, "let me sit on the box, my dear!"

Vasíli consented. We exchanged places: he immediately started to snore, and so spread himself in the calash that no place was left for anybody else; while from the height which I occupied, a very pleasing picture was unravelled before me, namely our four horses, Neruchínskaya, Sexton, Left Shaft, and Apothecary, whose properties I had studied to the minutest details and shades.

"Why is Sexton to-day on the off side, and not on the nigh side, Filípp?" I asked him somewhat timidly.