[节选]Master and Man

'There, that's all right!  Now, now, don't bristle up!' said

Nikita, pressing down into the sledge the freshly threshed oat

straw the cook's husband had brought.  'And now let's spread

the sacking like this, and the drugget over it.  There, like

that it will be comfortable sitting,' he went on, suiting the

action to the words and tucking the drugget all round over the

straw to make a seat.



'Thank you, dear man.  Things always go quicker with two

working at it!' he added.  And gathering up the leather reins

fastened together by a brass ring, Nikita took the driver's

seat and started the impatient horse over the frozen manure

which lay in the yard, towards the gate.



'Uncle Nikita!  I say, Uncle, Uncle!' a high-pitched voice

shouted, and a seven-year-old boy in a black sheepskin coat,

new white felt boots, and a warm cap, ran hurriedly out of the

house into the yard.  'Take me with you!' he cried, fastening

up his coat as he ran.



'All right, come along, darling!' said Nikita, and stopping the

sledge he picked up the master's pale thin little son, radiant

with joy, and drove out into the road.



It was past two o'clock and the day was windy, dull, and cold,

with more than twenty degrees Fahrenheit of frost.  Half the

sky was hidden by a lowering dark cloud. In the yard it was

quiet, but in the street the wind was felt more keenly.  The

snow swept down from a neighbouring shed and whirled about in

the corner near the bath-house.



Hardly had Nikita driven out of the yard and turned the horse's

head to the house, before Vasili Andreevich emerged from the

high porch in front of the house with a cigarette in his mouth

and wearing a cloth-covered sheep-skin coat tightly girdled low

at his waist, and stepped onto the hard-trodden snow which

squeaked under the leather soles of his felt boots, and

stopped.  Taking a last whiff of his cigarette he threw it

down, stepped on it, and letting the smoke escape through his

moustache and looking askance at the horse that was coming up,

began to tuck in his sheepskin collar on both sides of his

ruddy face, clean-shaven except for the moustache, so that his

breath should not moisten the collar.