“But you’ll be glad of the lift. You must be tired,” said the man; “and I don’t mind carrying you, if it rests you.”
“Oh, I’m not at all tired. I’ve learned to walk a good long way, now, without wanting to rest. Set me down, please. It will do us both good to be in sharper exercise. Here, let’s run! It’ll warm us. Come! One, two, three, and away!”
The man hesitated. “I’m not in the humor to run,” he said, laughing.
“Nonsense! It’ll do you good! You must!” she replied. “The less you feel inclined to stir quickly, the more necessary it is you should exert yourself. It’s only the numbing effect of this bleak air. You feel chilled inside, don’t you? But, never mind! Nothing like a race to cure you. Now, then! Give me your hand! Let’s start for that clump of low bushes, yonder!”
She planned several of these running matches, fixing the starting-posts, appointing the goals, arranging and deciding all the particulars. And when they had been successively achieved, she turned to the man, and said with an air of satisfied triumph: “Well! wasn’t I right? You feel warmer now, don’t you?”
He returned her nod with another, smiling, and highly entertained. But she, quite gravely, rejoined: “Of course; and yet, if I had not made you take a good run, you’d have kept creep-creep-creeping along, till your blood had become as stagnant as the surface of our Dnieper, when it’s frozen into ice a foot thick. Besides, the race has not only made you warm, it has beguiled the way; for here is the good woman’s hut close at hand. Now, once more. Give me this much start, and I’ll beat you!”
The good peasant woman received her little guest of overnight and her companion with much hearty kindness.
“’Tis a wild place,” she said, “and when one of these sudden snow-storms come on, ’tis hard for us—let alone a stranger—to find the way out.”
“I’ve given him a helping hand as far as I can,” said the child with her decisive nod. “Now it’s for you to do your share, and kindly give him a meal, as you did me last night.”