The cook brought out a smallish box, opened it, placed it upside down on the ground, and began to thump the bottom with her fist. And, understanding what that meant, Tikhon Ilitch slowly shook his head: “Akh, you housewife, curse you! You’re knocking out the cockroaches?”
“There’s a regular cloud of them in there!” replied the cook gaily. “When I peeped in—Lord, what a sight!”
And, gritting his teeth, Tikhon Ilitch walked out to the highway and gazed long at the rolling plain, in the direction of Durnovka.
VIII
HIS living-rooms, the kitchen, the shop, and the granary, where formerly his liquor-trade had been carried on, constituted a single mass under one iron roof. On three sides the straw-thatched sheds of the cattle-yard were closely connected with it, and a pleasing quadrangle was thus obtained. The porch and all the windows faced the south. But the view was cut off by the grain-sheds, which stood opposite the windows and across the road. To the right was the railway station, to the left the highway. Beyond the highway was a small grove of birches. And when Tikhon Ilitch felt out of sorts, he went out on the highway. It ran southward in a white winding ribbon from hillock to hillock, ever following the fields in their declivities and rising again toward the horizon from the far-away watch-tower, where the railway, coming from the south-east, intersected it. And if any one of the Durnovka peasants chanced to be driving to Ulianovka—one of the more energetic and clever, that is, such as Yakoff, whom every one called Yakoff Mikititch[6] because he was greedy, and held fast to his little store of grain a second year, and owned three excellent horses—Tikhon Ilitch stopped him.
“You might buy yourself a cheap little cap with a visor, at least!” he shouted to Yakoff, with a grin.
Yakoff, in a peakless cap, hemp-crash shirt, and trousers of heavy striped linen, was sitting barefoot on the side-rail of his springless cart.
“’Morning, Tikhon Ilitch,” he said, staidly.
“’Morning! I tell you, ’tis time you sacrificed your round cap for a jackdaw’s nest!”