When I left Tenevo I took the same road by which I had come. The sun showed it was already midday. As in the morning, peasants' carts and landowners' britzkas, beguiled my hearing by their squeaking and the metallic rumble of their bells. Again, the gardener, Franz, drove past me with his vodka barrel, but this time it was probably full. Again his eyes gave me a sour look, and he touched his cap. His nasty face jarred on me, but this time again the disagreeable impression that the meeting with him had made on me was entirely wiped away by the forester's daughter, Olenka, whose heavy wagonette caught me up.
“Give me a lift!” I called to her.
She nodded gaily to me and stopped her vehicle. I sat down beside her, and the wagonette rattled on along the road, which like a light stripe cut through the three versts of the Tenevo forest. For about two minutes we looked at each other in silence.
“What a pretty girl she really is!” I thought as I looked at her throat and chubby chin. “If I were told to choose between Nadenka and her, I would choose her.… She's more natural, fresher, her nature is broader, bolder.… If she fell into good hands, much could be made of her!… The other is morose, visionary … clever.”
Lying at Olenka's feet there were two pieces of linen and several parcels.
“What a number of purchases you have made!” I said. “For what can you want so much linen?”
“That's not all I need!” Olenka replied. “I only bought these among all the rest. To-day I was a whole hour buying things in the market; to-morrow I must go to make purchases in the town.… And then all this must be made up.… I say, don't you know any woman who would go out to sew?”
“No, I think not.… But why have you to buy so many things? Why have they to be sewn? God knows your family is not large.… One, two … there, I've counted you all.…”
“How queer all you men are! You don't understand anything! Wait till you get married, you yourself will be angry then if after the wedding your wife comes to you all slovenly. I know Pëtr Egorych is not in want of anything. Still, it seems a bit awkward not to appear as a good housewife from the first.…”
“What has Pëtr Egorych to do with it?”