A SPORTSMAN'S SKETCHES
stand or sit down there as it happens, and they say, "See, this is what you must say," and I say it. Once I represented a blind man. . . . They laid little peas under each eyelid. . . . Yes, indeed.'
'And what were you afterwards?'
'Afterwards I became a cook again.'
'Why did they degrade you to being a cook again?'
'My brother ran away.'
'Well, and what were you under the father of your first mistress?'
'I had different duties; at first I found myself a page; I have been a postilion, a gardener, and a whipper-in.'
'A whipper-in? . . . And did you ride out with the hounds?'
'Yes, I rode with the hounds, and was nearly killed; I fell off my horse, and the horse was injured. Our old master was very severe; he ordered them to flog me, and to send me to learn a trade to Moscow, to a shoemaker.'
'To learn a trade? But you weren't a child, I suppose, when you were a whipper-in?'
'I was twenty and over then.'
'But could you learn a trade at twenty?'
'I suppose one could, some way, since the master ordered it. But he luckily died soon after, and they sent me back to the country.'
'And when were you taught to cook?'
Sutchok lifted his thin yellowish little old face and grinned.
124
