“Of course not!”
“Or being upset because someone else’s borzoi and not mine catches something. All I care about is to enjoy seeing the chase, is it not so, Count? For I consider that …”
“ A-tu! ” came the long-drawn cry of one of the borzoi whippers-in, who had halted. He stood on a knoll in the stubble, holding his whip aloft, and again repeated his long-drawn cry, “ A-tu! ” (This call and the uplifted whip meant that he saw a sitting hare.)
“Ah, he has found one, I think,” said Ilágin carelessly. “Yes, we must ride up. … Shall we both course it?” answered Nikoláy, seeing in Erzá and “Uncle’s” red Rugáy two rivals he had never yet had a chance of pitting against his own borzois. “And suppose they outdo my Mílka at once!” he thought as he rode with “Uncle” and Ilágin toward the hare.
“A full-grown one?” asked Ilágin as he approached the whip who had sighted the hare—and not without agitation he looked round and whistled to Erzá.
“And you, Mikháil Nikanórovich?” he said, addressing “Uncle.”
The latter was riding with a sullen expression on his face.
“How can I join in? Why, you’ve given a village for each of your borzois! That’s it, come on! Yours are worth thousands. Try yours against one another, you two, and I’ll look on!”
“Rugáy, hey, hey!” he shouted. “Rugáyushka!” he added, involuntarily by this diminutive expressing his affection and the hopes he placed on this red borzoi. Natásha saw and felt the agitation the two elderly men and her brother were trying to conceal, and was herself excited by it.
The huntsman stood halfway up the knoll holding up his whip and the gentlefolk rode up to him at a footpace; the hounds that were far off on