Even Irina, who is always ready to run and jump, feels oppressed by the still, silent house. The dining room is desolate with its breakfastless table, usually so cosy with its steaming samovar. As a rule they are at this time in St. Petersburg where, though Irina stays quietly all day in an upper room, except when attending church services, she can at least look out upon all the coming and going on the river and the Nevski Prospect. But this year Andrei the steward is raising questions about the plans and locations for new stables and barns, so they are here where everything is depressingly still and silent, and upstairs her father and mother are praying in their rooms. So she puts on fur-lined boots, a long fur coat with deep collar, and a fur cap which comes well down over the forehead, and once outside the house finds herself in the thick forest. Further on she comes to a frozen river, and fast-days and solemn services are all forgotten, for there are her two fur-wrapped brothers busy with a little sledge. The red scarves of the boys are taken for guiding reins, and far along the ice for two hours or more she drives her team. They have passed beyond the forest and out upon the steppes, where for miles ahead no trees are to be seen except where willows mark the curve of the river, or a few stunted saplings show black against the snow. On one side is a long, low sheepfold belonging to Irina’s father, and out comes the shepherd with a clamor of dogs. He has no chairs, so he throws down three heaps of clean straw for the children to sit on; and he, too, forgets that it is a fast-day as he reaches cakes of dark brown bread from a shelf below the tiny square window, and pours for them cups of goats’ milk. Black crust and all—it goes quickly, and then they rest and stroke the half-tamed sheep that come to nibble the straw while the shepherd tells the children stories. He cannot read, to be sure, but when he was a boy his old grandmother told them to him. Perhaps, because it is the Christmas season, he tells them of the old woman whom the Russians call Babouscka and the Italians Befana. Irina’s favorite is one that would remind you of Cinderella, although the fairy godmother is much more like an old witch; and as the children start off for home they wonder a little fearfully if this forest is not very like the one in the shepherd’s story. [Illustration: three boys]