KASSYAN OF FAIR SPRINGS
Annushka blushed like a poppy, grasped the handle of her basket with both hands, and looked in trepidation at the old man.
'No, she will get there all right,' he answered in the same languid and indifferent voice. 'Why not? . . . She will get there. . . . Run along.'
Annushka went rapidly away into the forest. Kassyan looked after her, then looked down and smiled to himself. In this prolonged smile, in the few words he had spoken to Annushka, and in the very sound of his voice when he spoke to her, there was an intense, indescribable love and tenderness. He looked again in the direction she had gone, again smiled to himself, and, passing his hand across his face, he nodded his head several times.
'Why did you send her away so soon?' I asked him. 'I would have bought her mushrooms.'
'Well, you can buy them there at home just the same, sir, if you like,' he answered, for the first time using the formal 'sir' in addressing me.
'She's very pretty, your girl.'
'No . . . only so-so,' he answered, with seeming reluctance, and from that instant he relapsed into the same uncommunicative mood as at first.
Seeing that all my efforts to make him talk again were fruitless, I went off into the clearing. Meantime the heat had somewhat abated; but my ill-success, or, as they say among us, my 'ill-luck,' continued, and I returned to the settlement with nothing but one corncrake and the new axle.
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