Here Loyka lapsed into silence: he looked all over the assemblage to see what sort of effect his words had produced. They had produced an effect.
“I could have told you so just this minute.”
“Yes, God grant them happiness, they will make a nice couple.”
“Barushka is at ease now, she is not hot any longer.”
“And where is Joseph?”
“Oh! not far off, I warrant. Perhaps he is listening somewhere.”
One of the neighbours rose in order that he might fetch Joseph; the others made a place beside Barushka, and when Joseph entered the apartment, he was greeted with a hearty volley of congratulations, and the neighbours who led him in pointed to the vacant place beside Barushka, and said “There, that is your place.”
“We were surprised,” said the neighbours’ wives. “Hitherto we never had the least suspicion,” but they had had a pretty shrewd suspicion all the same, because they had already several times talked the whole matter over at home, on the way to and from chapel, on the road to and from market, on the village green, and behind the barn.
Joseph seated himself beside Barushka, and when silence again prevailed, he said “Oh! Barushka, prythee why not? Since our parents wish us to wed why should we not be man and wife,” and after
