A SPORTSMAN'S SKETCHES
'Till the winter, I think.'
The old lady said no more.
'And here,' interposed Radilov, indicating to me a tall and thin man, whom I had not noticed on entering the drawing-room, 'is Fyodor Miheitch. . . . Come, Fedya, give the visitor a specimen of your art. Why have you hidden yourself away in that corner?'
Fyodor Miheitch got up at once from his chair, fetched a wretched little fiddle from the window, took the bow—not by the end, as is usual, but by the middle—put the fiddle to his chest, shut his eyes, and fell to dancing, singing a song, and scraping on the strings. He looked about seventy; a thin nankin overcoat flapped pathetically about his dry and bony limbs. He danced, at times skipping boldly, and then dropping his little bald head with his scraggy neck stretched out as if he were dying, stamping his feet on the ground, and sometimes bending his knees with obvious difficulty. A voice cracked with age came from his toothless mouth.
Radilov must have guessed from the expression of my face that Fedya's 'art' did not give me much pleasure.
'Very good, old man, that's enough,' he said. 'You can go and refresh yourself.'
Fyodor Miheitch at once laid down the fiddle on the window-sill, bowed first to me as the guest, then to the old lady, then to Radilov, and went away.
76
