At the third verst, near a chapel, the outrider bore to the left, into a crossroad, and the coachman shouted to him for having turned in so abruptly that the centre horses were struck by the shaft; and the carriage almost glided all the way downhill. Before reaching the house, the outrider looked back at the coachman and pointed to something; the coachman looked back at the lackey, and indicated something to him. And all of them looked in the same direction.
“What are you looking at?” asked Iván Petróvich.
“Geese,” said Míshka.
“Where?”
Though he strained his vision, he could not see them.
“There they are. There is the forest, and there is the cloud, so be pleased to look between the two.”
Iván Petróvich could not see anything.
“It is time for them. Why, it is less than a week to Annunciation.”
“That’s so.”
“Well, go on!”
Near a puddle, Míshka jumped down from the footboard and tested the road, again climbed up, and the carriage safely drove on the pond dam in the garden, ascended the avenue, drove past the cellar and the laundry, from which water was falling, and nimbly rolled up and stopped at the porch. The Chernýshev calash had just left the yard. From the house at once ran the servants: gloomy old Danílych with the side whiskers, Nikoláy, Míshka’s brother, and the boy Pavlúshka; and after them came a girl with large black eyes and red arms, which were bared above the elbow, and with just such a bared neck.