at the girls.

'Why, Maryanka has quite forgotten you,' said Ustenka, nudging Maryanka
with her elbow and breaking into a shrill laugh.

Maryanka moved away from the horse and throwing back her head calmly
looked at the Cossack with her large sparkling eyes.

'True enough, you have not been home for a long time! Why are you
trampling us under your horse?' she remarked dryly, and turned away.

Lukashka had appeared particularly merry. His face shone with audacity
and joy. Obviously staggered by Maryanka's cold reply he suddenly
knitted his brow.

'Step up on my stirrup and I'll carry you away to the mountains.
Mammy!' he suddenly exclaimed, and as if to disperse his dark thoughts
he caracoled among the girls. Stooping down towards Maryanka, he said,
'I'll kiss, oh, how I'll kiss you! ...'

Maryanka's eyes met his and she suddenly blushed and stepped back.

'Oh, bother you! you'll crush my feet,' she said, and bending her head
looked at her well-shaped feet in their tightly fitting light blue
stockings with clocks and her new red slippers trimmed with narrow
silver braid.

Lukashka turned towards Ustenka, and Maryanka sat down next to a woman
with a baby in her arms. The baby stretched his plump little hands
towards the girl and seized a necklace string that hung down onto her
blue beshmet. Maryanka bent towards the child and glanced at Lukashka
from the corner of her eyes. Lukashka just then was getting out from
under his coat, from the pocket of his black beshmet, a bundle of
sweetmeats and seeds.

'There, I give them to all of you,' he said, handing the bundle to
Ustenka and smiling at Maryanka.

A confused expression again appeared on the girl's face. It was as
though a mist gathered over her beautiful eyes. She drew her kerchief
down below her lips, and leaning her head over the fair-skinned face of
the baby that still held her by her coin necklace she suddenly began to
kiss it greedily. The baby pressed his little hands against the girl's
high breasts, and opening his toothless mouth screamed loudly.

"You're smothering the boy!" said the little one's mother, taking him
away; and she unfastened her beshmet to give him the breast. "You'd
better have a chat with the young fellow."

"I'll only go and put up my horse and then Nazarka and I will come
back; we'll make merry all night," said Lukashka, touching his horse
with his whip and riding away from the girls.

Turning into a side street, he and Nazark