“I don’t know,...  I only tell you what folks say.”

But it was clear that Semyon did not believe the schoolmistress.  The peasants did not believe her.  They always thought she received too large a salary, twenty-one roubles a month (five would have been enough), and that of the money that she collected from the children for the firewood and the watchman the greater part she kept for herself.  The guardian thought the same as the peasants, and he himself made a profit off the firewood and received payments from the peasants for being a guardian—­without the knowledge of the authorities.

The forest, thank God! was behind them, and now it would be flat, open ground all the way to Vyazovye, and there was not far to go now.  They had to cross the river and then the railway line, and then Vyazovye was in sight.

“Where are you driving?” Marya Vassilyevna asked Semyon.  “Take the road to the right to the bridge.”

“Why, we can go this way as well.  It’s not deep enough to matter.”

“Mind you don’t drown the horse.”

“What?”

“Look, Hanov is driving to the bridge,” said Marya Vassilyevna, seeing the four horses far away to the right.  “It is he, I think.”

“It is.  So he didn’t find Bakvist at home.  What a pig-headed fellow he is.  Lord have mercy upon us!  He’s driven over there, and what for?  It’s fully two miles nearer this way.”

They reached the river.  In the summer it was a little stream easily crossed by wading.  It usually dried up in August, but now, after the spring floods, it was a river forty feet in breadth, rapid, muddy, and cold; on the bank and right up to the water there were fresh tracks of wheels, so it had been crossed here.

“Go on!” shouted Semyon angrily and anxiously, tugging violently at the reins and jerking his elbows as a bird does its wings.  “Go on!”

The horse went on into the water up to his belly and stopped, but at once went on again with an effort, and Marya Vassilyevna was aware of a keen chilliness in her feet.

“Go on!” she, too, shouted, getting up.  “Go on!”

They got out on the bank.

“Nice mess it is, Lord have mercy upon us!” muttered Semyon, setting straight the harness.  “It’s a perfect plague with this Zemstvo....”

Her shoes and goloshes were full of water, the lower part of her dress and of her coat and one sleeve were wet and dripping:  the sugar and flour had got wet, and that was worst of all, and Marya Vassilyevna could only clasp her hands in despair and say: 

“Oh, Semyon, Semyon!  How tiresome you are really!...”

The barrier was down at the railway crossing.  A train was coming out of the station.  Marya Vassilyevna stood at the crossing waiting till it should pass, and shivering all over with cold.  Vyazovye was in sight now, and the school with the green roof, and the church with its crosses flashing in the evening sun:  and the station windows flashed too, and a pink smoke rose from the engine... and it seemed to her that everything was trembling with cold.