Page:Short Story Classics (Foreign, Volume 1, Russian, Collier, 1907).djvu/192

172 "But where will you go, Stepanich? Let well alone, you will not find it much better anywhere. You have a home here, warmth, arid a bit of land. Your wife is an able workwoman—"

"Land! You ought to see the land I have—why, there isn't a stick on it. This spring I planted some cabbages. Well, one day the track-master passed: 'What is this?' he says. 'Why did you not report it? Why not have waited for permission? Dig it out at once and not a vestige should be left of it.' He was in his cups. At another time he would not have said a word, and here he got it into his head— Three rubles fine!—"

For some moments Vasili pulled at his pipe in silence, then he said in a low voice: "It wanted but little more, and I would have made short work of him."

"Well, neighbor, you are a hot-head, I can tell you."

"I am not hot, I am only speaking and considering everything from the point of justice. But he will get it from me yet, the red-mug; I shall make a complaint to the master of the division in person. We shall see!"

And he really complained.

Once the master of the division came to make a preliminary inspection of the road. In three days' time very important gentlemen were expected from St. Petersburg to make an inspection of the road: everything had to be made ship-shape; some new gravel was ordered before their arrival, added, leveled, and smoothed out, the sleepers were examined,