GAMES
35
But if one were to judge that way, it would not even be possible to ride on chairs; and yet, Volódya himself remembers, I think, how in the long winter evenings we used to cover an armchair with a cloth, and make a carriage of it; one took the coachman's seat, another the lackey's, the girls were in the middle, three stools were the three horses, — and we started off on the road. And what different kinds of accidents used to happen on that road, and how merrily and swiftly those winter evenings passed away! To judge by what was going on now, there would be no game. And if there were to be no game, what, then, would be left?
