The old gentry always did that."
She carried out all her instructions, adhering rigorously to former
rules. She was wonderfully quiet, submissive, and sad. She read
thick, simply-written books--those in which the old script for _sh_
is confused with that for _t_. Now and then, however, she rang up
Polunin behind the old man's back, talking to him long and fretfully,
with mingled love, grief, and hatred.
In the holidays they drove about together in droskies, and told
fortunes: Kseniya Ippolytovna was presented with a waxen cradle. They
drove to town with some mummers, and attended an amateur performance
in a club. Polunin dressed up as a wood-spirit, Kseniya as a wood-
spirit's daughter--out of a birch-grove. Then they visited the
neighbouring landowners.
The Christmas holidays were bright and frosty, with a red morning
glow from the east, the daylight waxy in the sun, and with long blue,
crepuscular evenings.
IV
The old butler made a great ado in the house at the approach of the
New Year. In preparation for a great ball, he cleared the inlaid
floors, spread carpets, filled the lamps; placed new candles here and
there; took the silver and the dinner-services out of their chests,
and procured all the requisites for fortune-telling. By New Year's
Eve the house was in order, the stately rooms glittering with lights,
and uniformed village-lads stood by the doors.
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