Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume XIV).djvu/283

Rh and he sauntered home with his slow, rolling step.

The same evening in a little room, beside a bed covered with a striped eider-down, Onisim was sitting at a clumsy little table, facing Vassilissa. A huge, dingy yellow samovar was hissing and bubbling on the table; a pot of geranium stood in the window; in the other corner near the door there stood aslant an ugly chest with a tiny hanging lock; on the chest lay a shapeless heap of all sorts of old rags; on the walls were black, greasy prints. Onisim and Vassilissa drank their tea in silence, looking straight at each other, turning the lumps of sugar over and over in their hands, as it were reluctantly nibbling them, blinking, screwing up their eyes, and with a hissing sound sucking in the yellowish boiling liquid through their teeth. At last they had emptied the whole samovar, turned upside down the round cups—one with the inscription, 'Take your fill'; the other with the words, 'Cupid's dart hath pierced my heart'—then they cleared their throats, wiped their perspiring brows, and gradually dropped into conversation.

'Onisim Sergeitch, how about your master ' began Vassilissa, and did not finish her sentence.

'What about my master?' replied Onisim, and he leaned on his hand. 'He's all right. But why do you ask?'

'Oh, I only asked,' answered Vassilissa.