Egór Miháylovitch, in answer to the mistress’s questions, “Has Polikoúshka not yet returned?” and “Where can he be?” answered: “I can’t say,” and seemed pleased that his expectations were being fulfilled. “He ought to have been back by dinnertime,” said he significantly.
All that day no one heard anything of Polikéy; only later on it was known that some neighbouring peasants had seen him running about on the road, bareheaded, and asking everybody whether they had seen a letter. Another man had seen him asleep by the roadside, beside a horse and cart tied up. “I thought he was tipsy,” the man said; “and the horse looked as if it had not been fed for two days, its sides were so fallen in.”
Akoulína did not sleep all night, and kept listening; but Polikéy did not return that night. Had she been alone, and had she kept a cook and a maid, she would have felt still more unhappy; but as soon as the cocks crowed and the joiner’s wife got up, Akoulína was obliged to rise and light the fire. It was a holiday. The bread had to come out of the oven before daybreak, kvass had to be made, cakes baked, the cow milked, dresses and shirts ironed, the children washed, and the neighbour not allowed to take up the whole of the oven. So Akoulína, still listening, set to work.
It had grown light, and the church bells were ringing. The children were up, and Polikéy had still not returned. A little snow had fallen the day before, and lay in patches on the fields, on the road, and on the roofs; and now, as if in honour of the feast, the day was fair, sunny and frosty, so that one could see far and hear far.
But Akoulína, standing by the brick oven, her head thrust into the opening in front, was so busy with her cakes that she did not hear Polikéy drive up, and knew only from the children’s shouting that her husband had returned.
Annie, as the eldest, had greased her hair and dressed herself without help. She wore a new but crumpled print dress—a present from the