wares with him or not, she leaves her
customer and joins them. If they run, she feels so must she. The peasant
is sure to be wanting grease or salt, and that may mean ten kopeks'
unexpected gain. Meantime she is not likely to lose her present
customer, fascinated as the latter must be by her flow of speech.

So she leaves her, and runs after the peasant, who is already surrounded
by a score of women, shrieking, one louder than the other, praising
their ware to the skies, and each trying to make him believe that he and
she are old acquaintances. But presently the tumult increases, there is
a cry, "Cheap fowls, who wants cheap fowls?" Some rich landholder has
sent out a supply of fowls to sell, and all the women swing round
towards the fowls, keeping a hold on the peasant's cart with their left
hand, so that you would think they wanted to drag peasant, horse, and
cart along with them. They bargain for a few minutes with the seller of
fowls, and advise him not to be obstinate and to take their offers, else
he will regret it later.

Suddenly a voice thunders, "The peasants are coming!" and they throw
themselves as for dear life upon the cart-loads of produce; they run as
though to a conflagration, get under each other's feet, their eyes
glisten as though they each wanted to pull the whole market aside. There
is a shrieking and scolding, until one or another gets the better of the
rest, and secures the peasant's wares. Then only does each woman
remember that she has customers waiting in her shop, and she runs in
with a beaming smile and tells them that, as they have waited so long,
they shall be served with the best and the most beautiful of her store.

By eight o'clock in the morning, when the market is over, when they have
filled all the bottles left with them by their customers, counted up the
change and their gains, and each one has slipped a coin into her knotted
handkerchief, so that her husband should not know of its existence (one
simply must! One is only human--one is surely not expected to wrangle
with _him_ about every farthing?)--then, when there is nothing more to
be done in the shops, they begin to gather in knots, and every one tells
at length the incidents and the happy strokes of business of the day.
They have forgotten all the bad luck they wished each other, all the
abuse they exchanged, while the market was in progress; they know that
"Parnosseh is Parnosseh," and bear no malice, or, if they do, it is on