Vanyúsha did not answer. Screwing up his eyes he looked contemptuously after his master, and shook his head. Vanyúsha regarded Olénin as only his master, and Olénin regarded Vanyúsha as only his servant; and they would both have been much surprised if anyone had told them that they were friends, as they really were without knowing it themselves. Vanyúsha had been taken into his proprietor’s house when he was only eleven and when Olénin was the same age. When Olénin was fifteen he gave Vanyúsha lessons for a time and taught him to read French, of which the latter was inordinately proud; and when in specially good spirits he still let off French words, always laughing stupidly when he did so. Olénin ran up the steps of the porch and pushed open the door of the hut. Maryánka, wearing nothing but a pink smock, as all Cossack women do in the house, jumped away from the door, frightened, and pressing herself against the wall covered the lower part of her face with the broad sleeve of her Tartar smock. Having opened the door wider, Olénin in the semi-darkness of the passage saw the whole tall, shapely figure of the young Cossack girl. With the quick and eager curiosity of youth he involuntarily noticed the firm maidenly form revealed by the fine print smock, and the beautiful black eyes fixed on him with childlike terror and wild curiosity. “This is _she_,” thought Olénin. “But there will be many others like her” came at once into his head, and he opened the inner door. Old Granny Ulítka, also dressed only in a smock, was stooping with her back turned to him, sweeping the floor. “Good-day to you. Mother! I’ve come about my lodgings,” he began. The Cossack woman, without unbending, turned her severe but still handsome face towards him. “What have you come here for? Want to mock at us, eh? I’ll teach you to mock; may the black plague seize you!” she shouted, looking askance from under her frowning brow at the new-comer. Olénin had at first imagined that the way-worn, gallant Caucasian Army (of which he was a member) would be everywhere received joyfully, and especially by the Cossacks, our comrades in the war; and he therefore felt perplexed by this reception. Without losing presence of mind however he tried to explain that he meant to pay for his lodgings, but the old woman would not give him a hearing. “What have you come for? Who wants a pest like you, with your scraped face? You just wait a bit; when the master returns he’ll show you your place. I don’t want your dirty money! A likely thing—just as if we had never seen any! You’ll stink the house out with your beastly tobacco and want to put it right with money! Think we’ve never seen a pest! May you be shot in your bowels and your heart!” shrieked the old woman in a piercing voice, interrupting Olénin.