“You ought at least to hide behind a bush...” I said to Savka. “If the husband sees you...”
“He knows, anyway, who it is Agafya has come from.... The women don’t go to the kitchen garden at night for cabbages—we all know that.”
I glanced at Savka’s face. It was pale and puckered up with a look of fastidious pity such as one sees in the faces of people watching tortured animals.
“What’s fun for the cat is tears for the mouse...” he muttered.
Agafya suddenly jumped up, shook her head, and with a bold step went towards her husband. She had evidently plucked up her courage and made up her mind.
AT CHRISTMAS TIME
I
“WHAT shall I write?” said Yegor, and he dipped his pen in the ink.
Vasilisa had not seen her daughter for four years. Her daughter Yefimya had gone after her wedding to Petersburg, had sent them two letters, and since then seemed to vanish out of their lives; there had been no sight nor sound of her. And whether the old woman were milking her cow at dawn, or heating her stove, or dozing at night, she was always thinking of one and the same thing—what was happening to Yefimya, whether she were alive out yonder. She ought to have sent a letter, but the old father could not write, and there was no one to write.