to go down into the big ravine. Lipa and Praskovya, who had been walking
barefooted, sat down on the grass to put on their boots; Elizar sat down
with them. If they looked down from above Ukleevo looked beautiful and
peaceful with its willow-trees, its white church, and its little river,
and the only blot on the picture was the roof of the factories, painted
for the sake of cheapness a gloomy ashen grey. On the slope on the
further side they could see the rye--some in stacks and sheaves here and
there as though strewn about by the storm, and some freshly cut lying
in swathes; the oats, too, were ripe and glistened now in the sun like
mother-of-pearl. It was harvest-time. To-day was a holiday, to-morrow
they would harvest the rye and carry the hay, and then Sunday a holiday
again; every day there were mutterings of distant thunder. It was misty
and looked like rain, and, gazing now at the fields, everyone thought,
God grant we get the harvest in in time; and everyone felt gay and
joyful and anxious at heart.

"Mowers ask a high price nowadays," said Praskovya. "One rouble and
forty kopecks a day."

People kept coming and coming from the fair at Kazanskoe: peasant women,
factory workers in new caps, beggars, children.... Here a cart would
drive by stirring up the dust and behind it would run an unsold horse,
and it seemed glad it had not been sold; then a cow was led along by
the horns, resisting stubbornly; then a cart again, and in it drunken
peasants swinging their legs. An old woman led a little boy in a big cap
and big boots; the boy was tired out with the heat and the heavy
boots which prevented his bending his legs at the knees, but yet blew
unceasingly with all his might at a tin trumpet. They had gone down the
slope and turned into the street, but the trumpet could still be heard.

"Our factory owners don't seem quite themselves..." said Elizarov.
"There's trouble. Kostukov is angry with me. 'Too many boards have gone
on the cornices.' 'Too many? As many have gone on it as were needed,
Vassily Danilitch; I don't eat them with my porridge.' 'How can you
speak to me like that?' said he, 'you good-for-nothing blockhead! Don't
forget yourself! It was I made you a contractor.' 'That's nothing so
wonderful,' said I. 'Even before I was a contractor I used to have
tea every day.' 'You are a rascal...' he said. I said nothing. 'We
are rascals in this world,' thought I, 'and you will be rascals in the
next....' Ha-ha-h