The Samovar Girl

by Frederick Ferdinand Moore

Both sat still and listened, with only the snapping of the fire and the song of the samovar in their ears. Though they waited in silence, the sound of the bells did not come to them down the chimney.

“Watch the road,” said his father, and returned to his stitching. Peter put his eye to the hole in the frost and watched the street up beyond the post-house. But he saw only an occasional Buriat, or a Cossack striding along, with now and then a Tartar hunter coming in from the hills with raw fur thrown over his shoulders, and soldiers hurrying down from the prison above the settlement.

Then, the bells! The first faint jingle came to Peter’s ears, and at the same time he saw the galloping horses of the leading sledge come up into the road from the river hollow, running free for the post-house.

“Now!” cried Peter. “The post is here! With the new almanacs! Please! Give me the kopecks! And may I run to see if the new almanac has come for sure?”

Peter’s father stopped work and filled his glass from the samovar, threw on the fire a fresh chunk of wood and dug some kopecks from his pocket.

“Go, little son, but dress warmly—it is too cold outside for a Tartar.”

Peter shoved his rag-bound feet into pink felt boots, whirled his long muffler about his neck and got into his gray coat. Pulling his cap over his head and ears, he took the kopecks from his father and flew out through the door in a cloud of white steam made by the warm air from inside the hut as it escaped into the frigid atmosphere outside.

Already the sledges had arrived in front of the post-house. The street was filled with people and there was a great to-do and gabbling. Peter could see the Cossack guards who had come with the sledges dismounting from their horses. The half-frozen drivers of the sledges were rolling stiffly out of their blankets, to clump through the icicle-fringed door of the post-house for their hot bowls of borsht and their drams of vodka.

Peter ran up to the crowd surrounding the sledges and breathlessly pushed in between the legs of the soldiers and onlookers. Surely, he thought, this month the almanacs must have come! Twice before he had been disappointed by the monthly mail and now he was shaking with eagerness. He wanted to cry out at once to those about the sledges, “Has the new almanac come?”

But there were no mail sacks on the first sledge. Instead it had five travelers—an old woman, an officer who was an aide of the Colonel Governor, two fur-buyers, and a little girl—a pretty little girl, who was about the same age as Peter. She had pulled back her beautiful cap of ermine, and Peter could see the pink of her cheeks, her laughing blue eyes and the scarlet silk lining of her coat of sables where she had turned the collar away from her chin. She was standing up in the sledge and looking over the heads of the crowd and chattering with her old nurse in delight at having arrived back at her home.