Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 02.djvu/61



then the head of a peasant woman carrying linen on a yoke flashed by the window, and a minute later Davýdka's mother entered the hut. She was a tall woman of about fifty years, and was well preserved and active. Her pockmarked and wrinkled face was not handsome, but her straight, firm nose, her compressed thin lips, and her keen gray eyes expressed intelligence and energy. The angularity of her shoulders, the flatness of her bosom, the bony state of her hands, and the well-developed muscles on her black bare feet witnessed to the fact that she had long ceased to be a woman, and was only a labourer.

She entered boldly into the room, closed the door, pulled down her skirt, and angrily looked at her son. Nekhylúdov wanted to tell her something, but she turned away from him, and began to make the signs of the cross before a black wooden image that peered out from behind the loom. Having finished her devotion, she straightened out her dirty checkered kerchief in which her head was wrapped, and made a low obeisance before the master.

"A pleasant Lord's Day to your Grace," she said. "May God preserve you, our father—!"

When Davýdka saw his mother he evidently became embarrassed, bent his back a little, and lowered his neck even more.

"Thank you, Arína," answered Nekhlyúdov. " I have just been speaking with your son about your farm."