The little copper-colored Cossack seemed to me to be no man, but something much more significant—a legendary being, better and on a higher plane than ordinary people. I could not talk to him. When he asked me a question I smiled blissfully and remained shyly silent. I was ready to follow him anywhere, silently and humbly, like a dog. All I wanted was to see him often, and to hear him sing.
[CHAPTER VIII]
When the snows came, grandfather once more took me to grandmother's sister.
"It will do you no harm," he said to me.
I seemed to have had a wonderful lot of experience during the summer. I felt that I had grown older and cleverer, and the dullness of my master's house seemed worse than ever. They fell ill as often as ever, upsetting their stomachs with offensive poisons, and giving one another detailed accounts of the progress of their illnesses. The old woman prayed to God in the same terrible and malignant way. The young mistress had grown thin, but she moved about just as pompously and slowly as when she was expecting her child. When she stitched at the baby-clothes she always sang the same song softly to herself:
"Spiria, Spiria, Spiridon,
Spiria, my little brother,
I will sit in the sledge myself
And Spiria on the foot-board."
If any one went into the room she left off singing at once and cried angrily:
"What do you want?"
I fully believed that she knew no other song but that.