Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 01.djvu/42

14 the receipt would not be delivered for two months yet. In regard to the hay you have deigned to remark, suppose even we shall get three thousand roubles—"

He cast 3,000 on the abacus and kept silent for about a minute, looking now at the abacus, now into father's eyes, as much as to say:

"You see yourself how little that is! And the hay, again, will have to be sold first; if we were to sell it now, you can see for yourself—"

He evidently had still a great supply of proofs; it was, no doubt, for this reason that papa interrupted him.

"I sha'n't change my order," said he; "but if there will really be a delay in the receipt of the money, then we can't help ourselves, and you will take as much money of the Khabárovka estate as will be necessary."

"Your servant, sir!"

By Yákov's expression of face and by his fingers one could tell that this latter order afforded him a great pleasure.

Yákov was a serf, but a very zealous and devoted man. Like all good stewards, he was extremely close-fisted for his master, and had the strangest conceptions about his master's advantages. He eternally schemed for the increase of his master's property at the expense of that of his mistress, and tried to prove that it was necessary to use all the income from her estates for the Petróvskoe village, where we were living. He was triumphant at this moment, because he had been completely successful.

Having bid us good morning, papa told us that we had been long enough frittering our time away in the village, that we were no longer babies, and that it was time for us to begin studying in earnest.

"I think you know already that I am this very evening going to Moscow, and that I shall take you with me," said he. "You will be living with grandmother, and mamma will stay here with the girls. And remember