“Where’d ye find it?” asked Nicholas.
It was a baby in a sack of red quilted flannel. Uncle picked it up by the flap of the sack and let it dangle from his thumb and forefinger in a way to cause a mother’s heart to tremble.
“Mine,” he said.
“A girl or a boy?” I asked.
“His name is Tarass, Tarass Bulba, eh?” He brought the baby to me and sat down on my legs, for I had not got up from the park seat on which I was resting.
“Where is his mother?” I asked. He put his finger to his lips.
“Asleep; say nothing. My little cossack, there’s an arm for you,” said he, taking a chubby little limb from its cosy resting-place, whereupon he proceeded to undress the child for our edification. But just as he was concluding that delicate operation a man in a goat-skin hat and jacket burst into the waiting-room, and a couple of porters and three third-class passengers.
“Outside, cut-throats,” said Uncle, pulling out a pistol from his belt. The porters and the passengers fled. But the man in the goat-skin jacket held up his arms as if Uncle had cried “Hands up!” and from the moment he burst in he had kept saying “Water!” as if he was demented or the train was on fire.
“Water, water, water!” Uncle put up his pistol in his belt again.
“More softly,” he whispered. “You want water? You’ll get no water here; vodka plenty, but water none.”