Lukáshka went whistling along the cordon.
“Take the string with you,” he shouted.
Nazirka obeyed.
“I’ll give him a bit of my mind today, I really will,” continued Nazárka. “Let’s say we won’t go; we’re tired out and there’s an end of it! No, really, you tell him, he’ll listen to you. It’s too bad!”
“Get along with you! What a thing to make a fuss about!” said Lukáshka, evidently thinking of something else. “What bosh! If he made us turn out of the village at night now, that would be annoying: there one can have some fun, but here what is there? It’s all one whether we’re in the cordon or in ambush. What a fellow you are!”
“And are you going to the village?”
“I’ll go for the holidays.”
“Gúrka says your Dunáyka is carrying on with Fómushkin,” said Nazárka suddenly.
“Well, let her go to the devil,” said Lukáshka, showing his regular white teeth, though he did not laugh. “As if I couldn’t find another!”
“Gúrka says he went to her house. Her husband was out and there was Fómushkin sitting and eating pie. Gúrka stopped awhile and then went away, and passing by the window he heard her say, ‘He’s gone, the fiend.... Why don’t you eat your pie, my own? You needn’t go home for the night,’ she says. And Gúrka under the window says to himself, ‘That’s fine!’”