6.
Showing that Sereda Is Feminine
Then, having snapped his fingers at that foolish signboard, Jurgen would have turned easterly, toward Bellegarde: but his horse resisted. The pawnbroker decided to accept this as an omen.
"Forward, then!" he said, "in the name of Koshchei." And thereafter
Jurgen permitted the horse to choose its own way.
Thus Jurgen came through a forest, wherein he saw many things not salutary to notice, to a great stone house like a prison, and he sought shelter there. But he could find nobody about the place, until he came to a large hall, newly swept. This was a depressing apartment, in its chill neat emptiness, for it was unfurnished save for a bare deal table, upon which lay a yardstick and a pair of scales. Above this table hung a wicker cage, containing a blue bird, and another wicker cage containing three white pigeons. And in this hall a woman, no longer young, dressed all in blue, and wearing a white towel by way of head-dress was assorting curiously colored cloths.
She had very bright eyes, with wrinkled lids; and now as she looked up at Jurgen her shrunk jaws quivered.
"Ah," says she, "I have a visitor. Good day to you, in your glittering shirt. It is a garment I seem to recognize."
"Good day, grandmother! I am looking for my wife, whom I suspect to have been carried off by a devil, poor fellow! Now, having lost my way, I have come to pass the night under your roof."
"Very good: but few come seeking Mother Sereda of their own accord."
Then Jurgen knew with whom he talked: and inwardly he was perturbed, for all the Léshy are unreliable in their dealings.