Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/102

Tales from Tolstoi ness was the blackening head of Brownie, and his back, on which the large sack was flapping; and the only thing to be heard was the whistling of the wind, the fluttering and shivering of the piece of cloth on the upright sledge-shaft, and the pattering of the snow on the back of the sledge. He covered himself up again, "Well, if we must make a night of it, we must, that's all. 'Tis all one if we wait for tomorrow. It will only be a day lost, and the others will never be able to get there in such weather." And then he recollected that on the 9th he ought to receive money from the butcher for a gelded ram. "He will come himself, he won't find me, and my wife does not understand money matters: she has no manners, and doesn't understand polite intercourse at all," he continued thinking, calling to mind how she had not known how to converse with the local magistrate who had been among his guests at the feast the evening before. "But of course, where did the woman ever see the like before? What sort of a place was her parents' home, after all? Why, her father was but a rich village muzhik, with a pot-house and that sort of thing, and that's all. But what haven't I done during these last fifteen years? Why, I've set a-going a shop, two inns, and a mill. And I rent two properties. And I've got a house with a storeroom under an iron roof," he proudly reflected. "I got nothing from my parents. And whose voice is it now that lays down the law in the neighbourhood? Why, Brekhunov's, of course!

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