‘Then go quickly to the hall. The peasants want to see you; something from your nurse.’
When I went down to the hall, one of the peasants would give me a little bundle containing perhaps a few rye cakes, half a dozen hard-boiled eggs, and some apples, tied in a motley coloured cotton kerchief. ‘Take that: it is your nurse, Vasilísa, who sends it to you. Look if the apples are not frozen. I hope not: I kept them all the journey on my breast. Such a fearful frost we had.’ And the broad, bearded face, covered with frost-bites, would smile radiantly, showing two rows of beautiful white teeth from beneath quite a forest of hair.
‘And this is for your brother, from his nurse Anna,’ another peasant would say, handing me a similar bundle. ‘“Poor boy,” she says, “he can never have enough at school.”’
Blushing and not knowing what to say, I would murmur at last, ‘Tell Vasilísa that I kiss her, and Anna too, for my brother.’ At which all faces would become still more radiant.
‘Yes, I will, to be sure.’
Then Kiríla, who kept watch at father’s door, would whisper suddenly, ‘Run quickly upstairs; your father may come out in a moment. Don’t forget the kerchief; they want to take it back.’
As I carefully folded the worn kerchief, I most passionately desired to send Vasilísa something. But I had nothing to send, not even a toy, and we never had pocket-money.
Our best time, of course, was in the country. As soon as Easter and Whitsuntide had passed, all our thoughts were directed towards Nikólskoye. However, time went on—the lilacs must be past blooming at Nikólskoye—and father had still thousands of affairs to keep him in town. At last, five or six peasant-carts entered our yard: they came to take all sorts of things which had to be sent to the country house. The great old coach and the other coaches in which we were going to make the journey were taken out and inspected once more. The boxes began to be packed. Our lessons made slow progress; at every moment we interrupted our teachers, asking whether this or that book should be taken with us, and long before all others we began packing our books, our slates, and our toys, which were of our own making.
Everything was ready: the peasant-carts stood heavily loaded with furniture for the country house, boxes containing the kitchen utensils, and almost countless empty glass jars which were to be brought back in the autumn filled with all kinds of preserves. The peasants waited every morning for hours in the hall; but the order for leaving did not come. Father continued to write all the morning in his room, and disappeared at night. Finally, our stepmother interfered, her maid having ventured to report that the peasants were very anxious to return, as haymaking was near.
Next afternoon, Frol, the major-domo, and Mikhael Aléeff, the first violin, were called into father’s room. A sack containing the ‘food money’—that is, a few coppers a day—for each of the forty or fifty souls who were to accompany the household to Nikólskoye, was handed to Frol, with a list. All were enumerated in that list: the band in full; then the cooks and the under-cooks, the laundresses, the under-laundress, who was blessed with a family of six mites, ‘Polka Squinting,’ ‘Domna the Big One,’ ‘Domna the Small One,’ and the rest of them.