Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/103

Rh "And how did it come about? Why, because I recollect what I am about, and put my shoulder to the wheel, and don't loaf about and do foolishly, as do the others. Why, I don't even sleep o' nights. Snowstorm or no snowstorm, off I go. And there's a way of doing things, too. Some people think that making money is a mere joke. Not a bit of it, one has to take a little trouble, and rack one's brains about it. They think it's all a matter of luck. Look at the Mironovs, they are millionaires, and why? because they took trouble! God gives His help, too, no doubt; and ah! if He would but give the health and strength!" And the bare thought that he, too, like Mironov, who began the world with nothing—that he, too, might become just such another millionaire, so inspired Vasily Andreich that he felt the necessity of talking to someone else. But there was no one to talk to. If only he could get to Goryachkina, he could speak a bit with the landowner there, and teach him a thing or two.

"Whew, how it blows! And all the roads will be so snowed up that they'll never get us out of this to-morrow," thought he, listening to the wailing of the wind, which was blowing full upon the front of the sledge, bending it inwards and flogging it with lumps of snow.

"And all for nothing have I listened to Nikita," thought he. "We ought to have gone on. We should have come out somewhere. We might have gone back to Grishkino and passed the night at Taras'. And now we shall have to sit here all night long. A nice thing, I must say. What a lot I have to put up 53