of him, in a shirt of fine texture, with sturdy back and shoulders, his son who had come from Moscow for the feast; and yet another son, his broad-shouldered elder brother, who looked after the household; and there was also the starosta, a somewhat meagre, red-haired muzhik.
The muzhiks, after eating and drinking, had just assembled together to drink tea; the samovar standing on the floor near the stove was beginning to sing. There were children peeping forth here and there on the stove and on the polati[1] In one comer a woman was sitting over a cradle. The old woman of the house — she had a face covered in every direction with tiny wrinkles, her very lips were wrinkled — was devoting herself personally to Vasily Andreich. At the moment when Nikita entered the room she was pouring out of a thick glass bottle a little glass of vodka for Vasily Andreich.
"Nay, but you must, Vasily Andreich. One must keep well, you know, this weather," the old man of the house was saying.
The sight and smell of the vodka, especially now, when he was half frozen and half dead with hunger, profoundly affected Nikita. He frowned, and, shaking his cap and kaftan free of snow, he planted himself in front of the holy images, and just as if he perceived nothing else, crossed himself thrice and made obeisance; then he turned to the old man of the house, and bowed first to him, then to all who were at the table, and then to the women who were
31
- ↑ Sleeping-places in the peasants' hut.
