"Why, there you are, getting on nicely! and yet just now you said you were dying. Lie still and get warm! We're all right you see … !" Thus began Vasily Andreich …
But farther than that, to his great astonishment, he could not get, for the tears gushed out of his eyes and his lower jaw was all quivering. He ceased to speak, and simply swallowed what had got into his throat.
"I've a little overdone it, that's plain, I'm quite weak," thought he to himself. Yet this same weakness was not only not unpleasant to him, but afforded him a peculiar sort of joy, the like of which he had never experienced before.
"Yes, here we are," said he to himself, experiencing a sort of compassionate triumph. And thus he lay silent for a pretty long time, drying his eyes on the fur of his pelisse, and keeping well beneath his knee the right-hand corner of the pelisse, which kept flapping in the wind. But he had such an eager desire to talk to someone, so joyous did he feel. "Nick, lad!" said he.
"I'm nice and warm," resounded from the sledge beneath him.
"That's right, my brother! I had almost perished, and you had all but frozen to death; and as for me …"
But at this point his jaws became all tremulous again, and his eyes again filled with tears, and he could say no more.
"Well, it doesn't matter," he said to himself. "I in my own heart know what I know!" and he was silent.
72
