Project Gutenberg's The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories, by Anton Chekhov

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Title: The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories

Author: Anton Chekhov

Release Date: September 9, 2004 [EBook #13417]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COOK'S WEDDING AND OTHER ***

Produced by James Rusk

THE TALES OF CHEKHOV

VOLUME 12

THE COOK'S WEDDING AND OTHER STORIES

BY

ANTON TCHEKHOV

Translated by CONSTANCE GARNETT

CONTENTS

THE COOK'S WEDDING
SLEEPY
CHILDREN
THE RUNAWAY
GRISHA
OYSTERS
HOME
A CLASSICAL STUDENT
VANKA
AN INCIDENT
A DAY IN THE COUNTRY
BOYS
SHROVE TUESDAY
THE OLD HOUSE
IN PASSION WEEK
WHITEBROW
KASHTANKA
A CHAMELEON
THE DEPENDENTS
WHO WAS TO BLAME?
THE BIRD MARKET
AN ADVENTURE
THE FISH
ART
THE SWEDISH MATCH

THE COOK'S WEDDING

GRISHA, a fat, solemn little person of seven, was standing by the
kitchen door listening and peeping through the keyhole. In the
kitchen something extraordinary, and in his opinion never seen
before, was taking place. A big, thick-set, red-haired peasant,
with a beard, and a drop of perspiration on his nose, wearing a
cabman's full coat, was sitting at the kitchen table on which they
chopped the meat and sliced the onions. He was balancing a saucer
on the five fingers of his right hand and drinking tea out of it,
and crunching sugar so loudly that it sent a shiver down Grisha's
back. Aksinya Stepanovna, the old nurse, was sitting on the dirty
stool facing him, and she, too, was drinking tea. Her face was
grave, though at the same time it beamed with a kind of triumph.
Pelageya, the cook, was busy at the stove, and was apparently trying
to hide her face. And on her face Grisha saw a regular illumination:
it was burning and shifting through every shade of colour, beginning
with a crimson purple and ending with a deathly white. She was
continually catching hold of knives, forks, bits of wood, and rags
with trembling hands, moving, grumbling to herself, making a clatter,
but in reality doing nothing. She did not once glance at the table
at which they were drinking tea, and to the questions put to her
by the nurse she gave