“You’re making it up.”
“No, quite true, by Heaven!”
“Well, if she’s found another let her go to the devil,” said Lukáshka, after a pause. “There’s no lack of girls and I was sick of her anyway.”
“Well, see what a devil you are!” said Nazárka. “You should make up to the cornet’s girl, Maryánka. Why doesn’t she walk out with any one?”
Lukáshka frowned. “What of Maryánka? They’re all alike,” said he.
“Well, you just try...”
“What do you think? Are girls so scarce in the village?”
And Lukáshka recommenced whistling, and went along the cordon pulling leaves and branches from the bushes as he went. Suddenly, catching sight of a smooth sapling, he drew the knife from the handle of his dagger and cut it down. “What a ramrod it will make,” he said, swinging the sapling till it whistled through the air.
The Cossacks were sitting round a low Tartar table on the earthen floor of the clay-plastered outer room of the hut, when the question of whose turn it was to lie in ambush was raised. “Who is to go tonight?” shouted one of the Cossacks through the open door to the corporal in the next room.
“Who is to go?” the corporal shouted back. “Uncle Burlák has been and Fómushkin too,” said he, not quite confidently. “You two had better go, you and Nazárka,” he went on, addressing Lukáshka. “And Ergushóv must go too; surely he has slept it off?”