CHAPTER X
A PLEASANT SURPRISE
A very delightful surprise awaited the little boy. A few days after the meeting in his house his mother told him that the mir had elected his father deputy to the zemstvo. In a few days he must go to the capital of the district, and he had decided to take the little boy and his mother with him. That was news indeed! The little boy ran to tell his grandmother. Or, rather, he hopped on one foot all the way, for he was so glad that he had to do something unusual.
The grandmother was delighted with the news. “You will go on the railroad,” she said. “That is a great thing. There were no railroads when I was young, and I should not like to travel on one. A good sledge with three horses is far safer, I think. But the railroad is faster, your father tells me, and that is something in cold weather.”
The little boy ran back to find out how soon they were to go. “Shall we go to-day?” he asked his mother.
“Oh, no, not to-day!” she answered.
“To-morrow, then?”
“Not to-morrow, but perhaps the day after to-morrow.”
“That is a long time!” sighed the little boy.
“You must have patience,” said the mother. “There is no virtue so necessary in this world as patience.”