“For I thought that she was some one sent here. Do I know anything surely? I fear every one in Taurogi.”
“She sent? Perhaps by good spirits! But she is as full of tricks as a weasel. If I were younger I don’t know to what it might come; even as it is a man is still desirous.”
Olenka was delighted, and placing her hands on her knees, she put her head on one side, mimicking Anusia, and looking askance at her uncle.
“So, dear uncle! you wish to bake an aunt for me out of that flour?”
“Oh, be quiet, be quiet!” said the sword-bearer.
But he laughed and began to twist his mustache with his whole hand; after a time he added,—
“Still she roused such a staid woman as you; I am certain that great friendship will spring up between you.”
In truth, Pan Tomash was not deceived, for in no long time a very lively friendship was formed between the maidens; and it grew more and more, perhaps just for this reason,—that the two were complete opposites. One had dignity in her spirit, depths of feeling, invincible will, and reason; the other, with a good heart and purity of thought, was a tufted lark. One, with her calm face, bright tresses, and an unspeakable repose and charm in her slender form, was like an ancient Psyche; the other, a real brunette, reminded one rather of an ignis fatuus, which in the night hours entices people into pathless places and laughs at their vexation. The officers in Taurogi, who looked at both every day, were seized with the desire to kiss Olenka’s feet, but Anusia’s lips.
Kettling, having the soul of a Scottish mountaineer, hence full of melancholy, revered and adored Olenka; but from the first glance he could not endure Anusia, who paid him in kind, making up for her losses on Braun and others, not excepting the sword-bearer of Rossyeni himself.
Olenka soon won great influence over her friend, who with perfect sincerity of heart said to Pan Tomash,—