“How d’you do, Stëpka?” he said to his dumb sister, who, smartly dressed like the others, came in from the street to take his horse; and he made signs to her to take the horse to the hay, but not to unsaddle it.
The dumb girl made her usual humming noise, smacked her lips as she pointed to the horse and kissed it on the nose, as much as to say that she loved it and that it was a fine horse.
“How d’you do, Mother? How is it that you have not gone out yet?” shouted Lukáshka, holding his gun in place as he mounted the steps of the porch.
His old mother opened the door.
“Dear me! I never expected, never thought, you’d come,” said the old woman. “Why, Kírka said you wouldn’t be here.”
“Go and bring some chikhir, Mother. Nazárka is coming here and we will celebrate the feast day.”
“Directly, Lukáshka, directly!” answered the old woman. “Our women are making merry. I expect our dumb one has gone too.”
She took her keys and hurriedly went to the outhouse. Nazárka, after putting up his horse and taking the gun off his shoulder, returned to Lukáshka’s house and went in.
Chapter XXXVII
“Your health!” said Lukáshka, taking from his mother’s hands a cup filled to the brim with chikhir and carefully raising it to his bowed head.