Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/57

Rh nice to sit upon," said he, smoothing down the sacking over the straw on all sides round about the seat.

"There we are, and many thanks, dear soul," said Nikita to the man-cook, "the two of us together will soon be ready with the job;" and adjusting the reins so as to let them hang loosely, Nikita took his seat on the box and urged his good horse coaxingly over the frozen dung to the gate.

"Daddy Mikit! daddy, daddy!" cried a voice behind him. It was a little seven-year-old lad, who, after a great clicking of the latch, scurried out of the barn into the courtyard, dressed in a black half-jacket, new, white bast shoes, and a warm cap. "Give me a ride, give me a ride!" piped his shrill little suppliant voice, and he buttoned his little half-jacket as he scampered along.

"Come along, then; come along! my little dove," said Nikita, stopping for a moment to set up before him the little petitioner, his master's son, who was beaming with joy, and they rode out into the street.

It was three o'clock. There were ten degrees of frost, and it was overcast and windy; in the courtyard it had seemed so still. In the street a strong wind was blowing; from the roof of the neighbouring barn the snow was flying and whirling into a drift in the corner next the bath-house. At the very moment when Nikita drove out and brought the horse up at the foot of the flight of steps, Vasily Andreich, with a cigarette in his mouth, and wearing a sheep-skin mantle girded tightly and low down by a stout girdle, 7