Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/60

Tales from Tolstoi shoes, he ran into the courtyard towards the workmen's hut.

"Ho, there, Arinushka! give me my khalat from the stove corner. I am going with master!" cried Nikita, running into the hut and taking his girdle down from the nail.

The workwoman, who had just risen from her after-dinner sleep, and was just then placing the samovar before her husband, gave Nikita a merry look, and catching the contagion of his bustling haste, scuttled off as rapidly as he himself could have done, and fetched down from the stove where it was drying his threadbare cloth kaftan, shook it, and smoothed out the creases.

"No wonder you and master carry it off so comfortably together," said Nikita, out of the mere desire of a loquacious and good-natured man to say something pleasant and obliging to whomsoever he may come face to face with. And spanning around him the narrow, well-worn little belt, he drew in his stomach (it was meagre enough already), and girded himself right over his jacket with all his might.

"So, there you are!" said he, after this was done, addressing himself this time not to the cook but to his belt, as he tucked the ends of it in behind his sash. "Mind you stick there, that's all!" and rising up from his stooping position, and lowering his shoulders to give his hands greater freedom, he put on his khalat, using some force to make it fit closely to his back, so that it might not interfere with his 10