"What has that to do with it? Don't you know that the glaze-gold which is used for the letters will not stick to the cover without some white of egg?"
"Yes, I have seen them smearing the cover with white of egg before putting on the letters. Then what?" "How 'what?" That is why we are waiting for the egg."
"So you have sent out to buy an egg?"
"No, but it will be there directly." He points out to me the corner which he has been running to look into the whole time, and there, on the ground, I see an overturned sieve, and under the sieve, a hen turning round and round and cackling.
"As if she'd rather burst!" continued Seinwill. "Just because we want it so badly, she won't lay. She lays an egg for me nearly every time, and now-just as if she'd rather burst!" he said, and began to scratch his head.
And the hen? The hen went on turning round and round like a prisoner in a dungeon, and cackled louder than ever.
To tell the truth, I had inferred at once that Seinwill was persuaded I should wait for my book till the hen had laid an egg, and as I watched Seinwill's wife, and saw with what anxiety she waited for the hen to lay, I knew that I was right, that Seinwill was indeed so persuaded, for his, wife called to him:
"Ask the young man for a kopek and send the child to buy an egg in the market. The cakes are getting cold."
