the furniture, and the floors colored with yellow ocher smelt of
dry wood baked by the sun. Wherever I looked there were flies
and flies and flies. . . . Grandfather and the Armenian were talk-
ing about grazing, about manure, and about oats. . . . I knew that
they would be a good hour getting the samovar; that grandfather
would be not less than an hour drinking his tea, and then would
lie down to sleep for two or three hours; that I should waste a
quarter of the day waiting, after which there would be again the
heat, the dust, the jolting cart. I heard the muttering of the two
voices, and it began to seem to me that I had been seeing the Ar-
menian, the cupboard with the crockery, the flies, the windows
with the burning sun beating on them, for ages and ages, and
should only cease to see them in the far-off future, and I was
seized with hatred for the steppe, the sun, the flies.. . .
A Little Russian peasant woman in a kerchief brought in a
tray of tea-things, then the samovar. The Armenian went slowly
out into the passage and shouted: "Mashya, come and pour out
tea! Where are you, Mashya?"
Hurried footsteps were heard, and there came into the room
a girl of sixteen in a simple cotton dress and a white kerchief. As
she washed the crockery and poured out the tea, she was stand-
ing with her back to me, and all I could see was that she was of a
slender figure, barefooted, and that her little bare heels were cov-
ered by long trousers.
The Armenian invited me to have tea. Sitting down to the ta-
ble, I glanced at the girl, who was handing me a glass of tea, and
felt all at once as though a wind were blowing over my soul and
blowing away all the impressions of the day with their dust and
dreariness. I saw the bewitching features of the most beautiful
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