“Good Boris, your guests’ command applies only to noisy and drunken roysterers, not to a gentleman so orderly and quiet as myself. Lead on—I’ll not disturb their slumbers.”
Boris hesitated, but a whisper from the girl seemed to decide him.
“His Excellency may enter,” said he.
The girl’s eyes danced; she could not have looked more glad had she herself, and not Wilfrid, been the traveller. While Boris conducted the yamchik with the car and horses across a courtyard to the stables, Wilfrid followed the girl—whose name she told him was Nadia—to a large room on the ground floor, a room not warmed by the ugly-looking closed-up stove, the usual accompaniment of a Russian room, but by a fire of pine-logs blazing upon the stone hearth, the ruddy glow forming a cheerful contrast to the snowy prospect without, which could be dimly discerned through the panes of the double lattice.
In one corner of the apartment hung a small painting of the Madonna, before which a taper was burning.
Wilfrid was passing this negligently by when Nadia gave a little scream.
“Ah! you are a heretic!” she cried. “Come, you must bow before the picture—so.” She showed him how to do it, and, to please her, Wilfrid bowed. “Now you make the sign of the cross, with your fingers bent thus.” Wilfrid imitated her action. “That’s right. Now you are a member of the True Church.”
She smiled so prettily that Wilfrid could not help smiling too.
Throwing a huge bearskin over the back and seat of a chair, Nadia drew it to the fire, and bidding her guest be seated, she began to bustle about, saying that all the servants were asleep and that it would be a pity to awaken them, so she herself would prepare his supper.