A low, bright star peeped in through the window. How infinite the
world seemed!
He did not notice when he fell asleep. The old woman woke him at
daybreak and led him through the backyard. The dawn was bright and
cold, and the grass was covered with a light frost. He walked along
briskly, swinging his stick, the collar of his overcoat turned up.
The sky was marvellously deep and blue.
At the station the Prince squeezed himself into a warm place on the
train, amongst other passengers carrying little sacks and bags of
flour. Thus, pressed against the sides of a truck, his clothes
bedaubed with white flour, he journeyed off to--Moscow.
Prince Prozorovsky had left at evening. Immediately after, furniture
was pulled about and re-arranged, the veneer was chipped off the
desk. The clock was about to be transferred to the office, but some
one noticed that it had only one hand. None of the men realised that
Kuvaldin's old clocks were necessarily one-handed, and moved every
five minutes simply because the minutes were not counted singly in
those days. Somebody suggested that the clock could be removed from
its case.
"Take the clock out of the box," Ivan Koloturov ordered. "Tell the
joiners to put some shelves in it, it will do as a cupboard for the
office.... Now then, don't stamp, don't stamp!"
That night an old woman came running in.
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