Seeing my fury, Natalia departed, while I continued to strut about and plan how to punish the bold woman for her offence.  Yet not more than a few moments had passed when Natalia returned and, stealing to my side, began to comfort me,

“Hush, then, my love.  Do not cry.  Forgive me my rudeness.  It was wrong of me.  You will pardon me, my darling, will you not?  There, there, that’s a dear,” and she took from her handkerchief a cornet of pink paper containing two little cakes and a grape, and offered it me with a trembling hand.  I could not look the kind old woman in the face, but, turning aside, took the paper, while my tears flowed the faster—­though from love and shame now, not from anger.

XIV —­ THE PARTING

On the day after the events described, the carriage and the luggage-cart drew up to the door at noon.  Nicola, dressed for the journey, with his breeches tucked into his boots and an old overcoat belted tightly about him with a girdle, got into the cart and arranged cloaks and cushions on the seats.  When he thought that they were piled high enough he sat down on them, but finding them still unsatisfactory, jumped up and arranged them once more.

“Nicola Dimitvitch, would you be so good as to take master’s dressing-case with you?” said Papa’s valet, suddenly standing up in the carriage, “It won’t take up much room.”

“You should have told me before, Michael Ivanitch,” answered Nicola snappishly as he hurled a bundle with all his might to the floor of the cart.  “Good gracious!  Why, when my head is going round like a whirlpool, there you come along with your dressing-case!” and he lifted his cap to wipe away the drops of perspiration from his sunburnt brow.

The courtyard was full of bareheaded peasants in kaftans or simple shirts, women clad in the national dress and wearing striped handkerchiefs, and barefooted little ones—­the latter holding their mothers’ hands or crowding round the entrance-steps.  All were chattering among themselves as they stared at the carriage.  One of the postillions, an old man dressed in a winter cap and cloak, took hold of the pole of the carriage and tried it carefully, while the other postillion (a young man in a white blouse with pink gussets on the sleeves and a black lamb’s-wool cap which he kept cocking first on one side and then on the other as he arranged his flaxen hair) laid his overcoat upon the box, slung the reins over it, and cracked his thonged whip as he looked now at his boots and now at the other drivers where they stood greasing the wheels of the cart—­one driver lifting up each wheel in turn and the other driver applying the grease.  Tired post-horses of various hues stood lashing away flies with their tails near the gate—­some stamping their great hairy legs, blinking their eyes, and dozing, some leaning wearily against their neighbours, and others cropping