Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/328

314 eyes, gleaming with an unnatural but serious and mature light, had a far-away look; his irregular lips, puckered up as if to whistle, were evidently waiting for the phrase, which, though ready-made in his imagination, he was trying to formulate.

Semka, standing in front of the great writing-table, with a big white patch of sheepskin on his back (the tailors had just been through the village), with his girdle unloosed and his hair tumbled, was writing very crooked lines and constantly dipping the pen in the inkstand.

I rumpled up Semka's hair, and when, with his fat face, and its projecting cheek-bones, and his disheveled hair, he turned to me with a startled look in his thoughtful and sleepy eyes, it was so ludicrous that I laughed aloud; but the children did not laugh.

Fedka, not altering the expression of his face, pulled Semka by the sleeve to make him go on with his writing.

"Wait," said he to me; "done in a minute!" (Fedka used the familiar tui, "thou" to me when he was excited and eager), and he went on dictating something more.

I took their copy from them and at the end of five minutes, when they were installed near the cupboard eating potatoes and kvas, and looking at the silver spoons, to which they were so unaccustomed, they broke out, without themselves knowing why, into ringing, boyish laughter. The old woman in the room above hearing them laugh, laughed too, without knowing why.

"What are you filling up so for?" said Semka. "Sit straight, or you will eat yourself one-sided."

And while they were taking off their shubas and bestowing themselves under the writing-table for the night, they did not cease to bubble over with the charming, healthy laughter of the peasant child. I read through what they had written. It was a new variation of the former story. Some things were left out, some new artistic beauties were added. And once more there was the same feeling for beauty, truth, and proportion.