Ústenka suddenly dropped her head on her friend’s breast, seized hold of her, and shook with smothered laughter. “You silly fool!” she exclaimed, quite out of breath. “You don’t want to be happy,” and she began tickling Maryánka. “Oh, leave off!” said Maryánka, screaming and laughing. “You’ve crushed Lazútka.” “Hark at those young devils! Quite frisky! Not tired yet!” came the old woman’s sleepy voice from the wagon. “Don’t want happiness,” repeated Ústenka in a whisper, insistently. “But you are lucky, that you are! How they love you! You are so crusty, and yet they love you. Ah, if I were in your place I’d soon turn the lodger’s head! I noticed him when you were at our house. He was ready to eat you with his eyes. What things Grandad has given me! And yours they say is the richest of the Russians. His orderly says they have serfs of their own.” Maryánka raised herself, and after thinking a moment, smiled. “Do you know what he once told me: the lodger I mean?” she said, biting a bit of grass. “He said, ‘I’d like to be Lukáshka the Cossack, or your brother Lazútka—.’ What do you think he meant?” “Oh, just chattering what came into his head,” answered Ústenka. “What does mine not say! Just as if he was possessed!” Maryánka dropped her hand on her folded _beshmet_, threw her arm over Ústenka’s shoulder, and shut her eyes. “He wanted to come and work in the vineyard today: father invited him,” she said, and after a short silence she fell asleep. Chapter XXXI The sun had come out from behind the pear-tree that had shaded the wagon, and even through the branches that Ústenka had fixed up it scorched the faces of the sleeping girls. Maryánka woke up and began arranging the kerchief on her head. Looking about her, beyond the pear-tree she noticed their lodger, who with his gun on his shoulder stood talking to her father. She nudged Ústenka and smilingly pointed him out to her. “I went yesterday and didn’t find a single one,” Olénin was saying as he looked about uneasily, not seeing Maryánka through the branches. “Ah, you should go out there in that direction, go right as by compasses, there in a disused vineyard denominated as the Waste, hares are always to be found,” said the cornet, having at once changed his manner of speech. “A fine thing to go looking for hares in these busy times! You had better come and help us, and do some work with the girls,” the old woman said merrily. “Now then, girls, up with you!” she cried. Maryánka and Ústenka under the cart were whispering and could hardly restrain their laughter. Since it had become known that Olénin had given a horse worth fifty rubles to Lukáshka, his hosts had become more amiable and the cornet in particular saw with pleasure his daughter’s growing intimacy with Olénin. “But I don’t know how to do the work,” replied Olénin, trying not to look through the green branches under the wagon where he had now noticed Maryánka’s blue smock and red kerchief.