‘What’s the good? It’s a peggling business, sir!’ he would say with lazy contempt.
Our hunting also ceased. Every time I began to talk of it, Yarmola found some excuse or other for refusing. Either his gun was out of order, or his dog was ill, or he was too busy. ‘I have no time, sir.... I have to be ploughing to-day,’ was Yarmola’s usual answer to my invitation; but I knew quite well that he would do no ploughing at all, but spend a good hour outside the inn in the doubtful hope of somebody standing him a drink. This silent, concealed animosity began to weary me, and I began to think of dispensing with Yarmola’s services, on the first suitable occasion.... I was restrained only by a sense of pity for his enormous poverty-stricken family, whom Yarmola’s four weekly roubles just saved from starvation.
VII
Once when I came to the chicken-legged hut, as my habit was, just before dark, I was immediately struck by the anxiety of its occupants. The old woman sat with her feet on the bed, hunched up, and swayed to and fro with her head in her hands, murmuring something I could not catch. She paid no attention to my greeting. Olyessia welcomed me kindly as always, but our conversation made no headway. She listened to me absently and answered me inconsequently. On her beautiful face lay the shadow of some unceasing secret trouble.
‘Something bad has happened to you, Olyessia, I can see,’ I said cautiously, touching her hand which lay on the bench.
Olyessia quickly turned her face to the window, as though she were examining something. She tried to look calm, but her eyebrows drew together and trembled, and her teeth violently bit her under lip.
‘No, ... what could have happened to us?’ she said with a dull voice. ‘Everything is just as it was.’
‘Olyessia, why don’t you tell me the truth? It’s wrong of you.... I thought that we had become real friends.’
‘It’s nothing, really.... Nothing.... Our troubles ... trifles.’