Master and Man | Page 4

wages Nikita earned went to his wife, and he raised no objection to that.
So now, two days before the holiday, Martha had been twice to see
Vasili Andreevich and had got from him wheat flour, tea, sugar, and a
quart of vodka, the lot costing three rubles, and also five rubles in cash,
for which she thanked him as for a special favour, though he owed
Nikita at least twenty rubles.
'What agreement did we ever draw up with you?' said Vasili
Andreevich to Nikita. 'If you need anything, take it; you will work it off.
I'm not like others to keep you waiting, and making up accounts and
reckoning fines. We deal straight-forwardly. You serve me and I don't
neglect you.'
And when saying this Vasili Andreevich was honestly convinced that
he was Nikita's benefactor, and he knew how to put it so plausibly that
all those who depended on him for their money, beginning with Nikita,
confirmed him in the conviction that he was their benefactor and did
not overreach them.
'Yes, I understand, Vasili Andreevich. You know that I serve you and
take as much pains as I would for my own father. I understand very
well!' Nikita would reply. He was quite aware that Vasili Andreevich
was cheating him, but at the same time he felt that it was useless to try
to clear up his accounts with him or explain his side of the matter, and
that as long as he had nowhere to go he must accept what he could get.
Now, having heard his master's order to harness, he went as usual
cheerfully and willingly to the shed, stepping briskly and easily on his
rather turned-in feet; took down from a nail the heavy tasselled leather
bridle, and jingling the rings of the bit went to the closed stable where
the horse he was to harness was standing by himself.
'What, feeling lonely, feeling lonely, little silly?' said Nikita in answer

to the low whinny with which he was greeted by the good-tempered,
medium-sized bay stallion, with a rather slanting crupper, who stood
alone in the shed. 'Now then, now then, there's time enough. Let me
water you first,' he went on, speaking to the horse just as to someone
who understood the words he was using, and having whisked the dusty,
grooved back of the well-fed young stallion with the skirt of his coat,
he put a bridle on his handsome head, straightened his ears and forelock,
and having taken off his halter led him out to water.
Picking his way out of the dung-strewn stable, Mukhorty frisked, and
making play with his hind leg pretended that he meant to kick Nikita,
who was running at a trot beside him to the pump.
'Now then, now then, you rascal!' Nikita called out, well knowing how
carefully Mukhorty threw out his hind leg just to touch his greasy
sheepskin coat but not to strike him--a trick Nikita much appreciated.
After a drink of the cold water the horse sighed, moving his strong wet
lips, from the hairs of which transparent drops fell into the trough; then
standing still as if in thought, he suddenly gave a loud snort.
'If you don't want any more, you needn't. But don't go asking for any
later,' said Nikita quite seriously and fully explaining his conduct to
Mukhorty. Then he ran back to the shed pulling the playful young
horse, who wanted to gambol all over the yard, by the rein.
There was no one else in the yard except a stranger, the cook's husband,
who had come for the holiday.
'Go and ask which sledge is to be harnessed--the wide one or the small
one--there's a good fellow!'
The cook's husband went into the house, which stood on an iron
foundation and was iron-roofed, and soon returned saying that the little
one was to be harnessed. By that time Nikita had put the collar and
brass-studded belly-band on Mukhorty and, carrying a light, painted
shaft-bow in one hand, was leading the horse with the other up to two
sledges that stood in the shed.
'All right, let it be the little one!' he said, backing the intelligent horse,
which all the time kept pretending to bite him, into the shafts, and with
the aid of the cook's husband he proceeded to harness. When
everything was nearly ready and only the reins had to be adjusted,
Nikita sent the other man to the shed for some straw and to the barn for
a drugget.

'There, that's all right! Now, now, don't bristle up!' said Nikita, pressing
down into the sledge the freshly threshed oat straw the cook's husband
had brought. 'And now let's spread the sacking like this, and the
drugget over it. There, like that it will