CHAPTER VI.
Volodia Ivanovitch's house stood close to the village street, so that as Elena looked from her windows she could see the long stretch of white road—the snow piled up in great walls on either side—the two rows of straggling, half-finished log huts, ending with the ruined Church, and the new posting-house.
In the distance, the flat surface of the frozen lake, the dark green of the pine forest, and the wide stretches of level country; broken here and there by the tops of the scattered wooden fences.
Up the street the sledges ran evenly, the horses jangling the bells on their great arched collars, the drivers in their leather fur-lined coats, cracking their whips and shouting.
Now and then a woman, in a thick pelisse, a bright-coloured handkerchief on her head, would come by; dragging a load of wood or carrying a child in her arms.
The air was stilly cold, with a sparkling clearness; the sky as blue and brilliant as midsummer.
Elena felt cheered by the exhilarating brightness. She was young, and gradually she rose from the state of indifference into which she had fallen, and began to take her old interest in all that was going on about her.
"I want to ask you something, Uncle Volodia," she said one day, as they sat round the samivar,[C] for she had begged that they might have at least one meal together, in the sitting-room.
[C] Tea-urn.
Maria was rather constrained on these occasions, seeming oppressed with the feeling that she must sit exactly in the centre of her chair. She spread a large clean handkerchief out over her knees, to catch any crumbs that might be wandering, and fixed her eyes on the children with respectful solemnity.
Volodia, on the contrary, always came in smiling genially, in his old homespun blouse and high boots; and was ready for a game with Daria, or a romp with Boris, the moment the tea things had been carried away by his wife.
"What is it, Elena Andreïevna?" he asked. "Nothing very serious, I hope?"
"Not very, Uncle Volodia. It's only that I want to learn something—I want to feel I can do something when our money has gone, for I know it won't last very long."
"Why trouble your head about business, Elena Andreïevna? You know your things sold for a great deal, and it is all put away in the wooden honey-box, in the clothes chest. It will last till you're an old woman!"
"But I would like to feel I was earning some money, Uncle Volodia. I think I might learn to make paper flowers. Don't you think so, dear Uncle Volodia? You know I began while mamma was with us; the lady in Mourum taught me. I wish very much to go on with it."
Uncle Volodia pondered. It might be an amusement for the poor girl, and no one need know of the crazy notion of selling them.
"If you like, Matoushka. Do just as you like," he said.
So it was decided that Elena should be driven over to Mourum on the next market day.
Volodia had undertaken, in the intervals of shop-keeping, to teach little Daria how to count; with the elaborate arrangement of small coloured balls, on a wire frame like a gridiron, with which he added up his own sums—instead of pencil and paper.
They sat down side by side with the utmost gravity. Old Volodia with the frame in one hand, Daria on a low stool, her curly golden head bent forward over the balls, as she moved them up and down, with a pucker on her forehead.
"Two and one's five, and three's seven, and four's twelve, and six's——"
"Oh, Daria Andreïevna! You're not thinking about what you're doing!"
"Oh, really I am, Uncle Volodia; but those tiresome little yellow balls keep getting in the way."
And then the lesson began all over again, until Daria sprang up with a laugh, and shaking out her black frock, declared she had a pain in her neck, and must run about a little!
"What a child it is!" cried Volodia admiringly. "If she lives to be a hundred, she'll never learn the multiplication table!"