Cossack
Government Office and near the two shops, in one of which cakes and
pumpkin seeds were sold, in the other kerchiefs and cotton prints. On
the earth-embankment of the office-building sat or stood the old men in
sober grey, or black coats without gold trimmings or any kind of
ornament. They conversed among themselves quietly in measured tones,
about the harvest, about the young folk, about village affairs, and
about old times, looking with dignified equanimity at the younger
generation. Passing by them, the women and girls stopped and bent their
heads. The young Cossacks respectfully slackened their pace and raised
their caps, holding them for a while over their heads. The old men then
stopped speaking. Some of them watched the passers-by severely, others
kindly, and in their turn slowly took off their caps and put them on
again.

The Cossack girls had not yet started dancing their khorovods, but
having gathered in groups, in their bright coloured beshmets with white
kerchiefs on their heads pulled down to their eyes, they sat either on
the ground or on the earth-banks about the huts sheltered from the
oblique rays of the sun, and laughed and chattered in their ringing
voices. Little boys and girls playing in the square sent their balls
high up into the clear sky, and ran about squealing and shouting. The
half-grown girls had started dancing their khorovods, and were timidly
singing in their thin shrill voices. Clerks, lads not in the service,
or home for the holiday, bright-faced and wearing smart white or new
red Circassian gold-trimmed coats, went about arm in arm in twos or
threes from one group of women or girls to another, and stopped to joke
and chat with the Cossack girls. The Armenian shopkeeper, in a
gold-trimmed coat of fine blue cloth, stood at the open door through
which piles of folded bright-coloured kerchiefs were visible and,
conscious of his own importance and with the pride of an Oriental
tradesman, waited for customers. Two red-bearded, barefooted Chechens,
who had come from beyond the Terek to see the fete, sat on their heels
outside the house of a friend, negligently smoking their little pipes
and occasionally spitting, watching the villagers and exchanging
remarks with one another in their rapid guttural speech. Occasionally a
workaday-looking soldier in an old overcoat passed across the square
among the bright-clad girls. Here and there the songs of tipsy Cossacks
who were merry-making cou