Once we were in luck.
We were waiting for likely employers, elbowing our way through the market, when we came upon a small wizened old lady with a stern, wrinkled face. Her head shook, and on her beak-like nose hopped large spectacles with heavy silver rims; she was constantly putting them straight as her small, coldly glittering eyes gleamed out from behind them.
"You are free? Are you looking for work?" she asked us, when we all stared at her longingly. "Very well," she said, on receiving a quick and respectful answer in the affirmative from Semka. "I want to have an old bath-house[7] pulled down, and a well cleaned. How much would you charge for it?"
"We should have to see, barynia, what sort of size your bath-house is," said Semka, politely and reasonably. "And the well too. They run different depths. Sometimes they are very deep."
We were invited to look, and in an hour's time, already armed with axes and a lever, we were lustily pulling down the rafters of the bath-house, having agreed to take it to pieces and to clean the well for five roubles.[8] The bath-house stood in the corner of an old neglected garden. Not far from it, among some cherry trees, was a summer-house, and from the top of the bath-house we saw that the old lady sat reading in there, holding a large open book on her lap. Now and then she cast a sharp, attentive glance at us, the book on her lap moved, and its massive clasps, evidently of silver, shone in the sun.
[7] In Russia private dwellings have separate bath-houses, built mostly of wood, and the baths are taken in somewhat the same manner as Turkish.—TR.
No work is so rapid as the work of destruction. We zealously bustled about among clouds of grey, pungent dust, sneezing, coughing, blowing our noses, and rubbing our eyes every minute. The bathhouse, half rotten, and old like its mistress, was soon crashing and falling to pieces.
"Now, mates, hard on it—ea-sy!" commanded Semka, and row after row of beams fell creaking to the ground.
"Wonder what book that is she's got. Such a thick one!" said Mishka, reflectively leaning upon his lever and wiping the sweat off his face with his palm. Immediately turned into a mulatto, he spat on his hands, raised the lever to drive it into a crack between two beams, drove it in, and added in the same reflective tone, "Suppose it's the Gospels—seems to me it's too thick."
"What's that to you?" asked Semka.