Page:Dead Souls - A Poem by Nikolay Gogol - vol1.djvu/145

Rh your eyes in pawn at the pot-house or what?' Then he proceeded to back the horses so as to extricate them, but there was no managing it—everything was in a tangle. The dappled-grey sniffed with curiosity at the new friends whom he found on each side of him. Meanwhile the ladies in the carriage looked at it all with an expression of alarm on their faces. One was an old lady, the other a young girl of sixteen, with golden hair very charmingly and skilfully coiled about her little head. The pretty oval of her face was rounded like an egg and had the transparent whiteness of one when, fresh and new-laid, it is held up to the light by the housekeeper's dark-skinned hand and the rays of the flashing sun filter through it: her delicate ears were also transparent and flushed crimson by the light that penetrated through them. The terror on her parted lips, the tears in her eyes were all so charming that our hero stared at her for some minutes without noticing the uproar that was going on among the horses and the coachmen. 'Back, do, you Nizhni-Novgorod crow!' yelled the other coachman. Selifan tugged at the reins as hard as he could, the other coachman did the same, the horses shuffled back a little, and then stepping over the traces were entangled again. While this was going on, the dappled-grey was so attracted by his new companions that he felt no inclination to get out of the predicament in which an unforeseen destiny had placed him and, laying his nose upon the neck of his new friend, whispered