Chapter 36 - Page 2

cold reply he
suddenly knitted his brow.

'Step up on my stirrup and I'll carry you away to the mountains.
Mammy!' he suddenly exclaimed, and as if to disperse his dark
thoughts he caracoled among the girls. Stooping down towards
Maryanka, he said, 'I'll kiss, oh, how I'll kiss you! ...'

Maryanka's eyes met his and she suddenly blushed and stepped back.

'Oh, bother you! you'll crush my feet,' she said, and bending her
head looked at her well-shaped feet in their tightly fitting light
blue stockings with clocks and her new red slippers trimmed with
narrow silver braid.

Lukashka turned towards Ustenka, and Maryanka sat down next to a
woman with a baby in her arms. The baby stretched his plump little
hands towards the girl and seized a necklace string that hung down
onto her blue beshmet. Maryanka bent towards the child and glanced
at Lukashka from the comer of her eyes. Lukashka just then was
getting out from under his coat, from the pocket of his black
beshmet, a bundle of sweetmeats and seeds.

'There, I give them to all of you,' he said, handing the bundle to
Ustenka and smiling at Maryanka.

A confused expression again appeared on the girl's face. It was as
though a mist gathered over her beautiful eyes. She drew her
kerchief down below her lips, and leaning her head over the fair-
skinned face of the baby that still held her by her coin necklace
she suddenly began to kiss it greedily. The baby pressed his
little hands against the girl's high breasts, and opening his
toothless mouth screamed loudly.

"You're smothering the boy!" said the little one's mother, taking
him away; and she unfastened her beshmet to give him the breast.
"You'd better have a chat with the young fellow."

"I'll only go and put up my horse and then Nazarka and I will come
back; we'll make merry all night," said Lukashka, touching his
horse with his whip and riding away from the girls.

Turning into a side street, he and Nazarka rode up to two huts
that stood side by side.

"Here we are all right, old fellow! Be quick and come soon!"
called Lukashka to his comrade, dismounting in front of one of the
huts; then he carefully led his horse in at the gate of the wattle
fence of his own home.

"How d'you do, Stepka?" he said to his dumb sister, who, smartly
dressed like the others, came in from the street to take his
horse; and he made signs to her to take the horse to the hay, but
not to unsaddle it.

The dumb girl made her usual humming noise, smacked her lips as
she pointed to the horse and kissed it on the nose, as much as to
say that she loved it and that it was a fine horse.

"How d'you do.