"MASTER" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tolstoy Leo)

the wages Nikita earned went to his wife, and he raised no objection to that. So now, two days
before the holiday, Martha had been twice to see Vasili Andreevich and had got from him wheat flour,
tea, sugar, and a quart of vodka, the lot costing three rubles, and also five rubles in cash, for which
she thanked him as a special favour, though he owed Nikita at least twenty rubles.
"What agreement did we ever draw up with you?" said Vasili Andreevich to Nikita. "If you
need anything, take it; you will work it off. I'm not like others to keep you waiting, and making up
accounts and reckoning fines. We deal straight-forwardly. You serv me and I don't neglect you."
And when saying this Vasili Andreevich was honestly convinced that he was Nikita's
benefactor, and he knew how to put it so plausibly that all those who depended on him for their
money, beginning with Nikita, confirmed him in the conviction that he was their benefactor and did
not overreach them.
"Yes, I understand, Vasili Andreevich. You know that I serve you and take as much pains
as I would for my own father. I understand very well!" Nikita would reply. He was quite aware that
Vasili Andreevich was cheating him, but at the same time he felt that it was useless to try to clear up
his accounts with him or explain his side of the matter, and that as long as he had nowhere to go he
must accept what he could get.
Now, having heard his master's order to harness, he went as usual cheerfully and willingly to
the shed, stepping briskly and easily on his rather turned-in feet; took down from a nail the heavy
tasseled leather bridle, and jingling the rings of the bit went to the closed stable where the horse he
was to harness was standing by himself.
"What, feeling lonely, feeling lonely, little silly?" said Nikita in answer to the low whinny with
which he was greeted by the good-tempered, medium-sized bay stallion, with a rather slanting
crupper, who stood alone in the shed. "Now then, now then, there's time enough. Let me water you
first," he went on, speaking to the horse just as to someone who understood the words he was using
and having whisked the dusty, grooved back of the well-fed young stallion with the skirt of his coat,
he put a bridle on his handsome head, straightened his ears and forelock, and having taken off his
halter led him out to water.
Picking his way out of the dung-strewn stable, Mukhorty frisked, and making play with his
hind leg pretended that he meant to kick Nikita, who was running at a trot beside him to the pump.
"Now then, now then, you rascal!" Nikita called out, well knowing how carefully Mukhorty
threw out his hind leg just to touch his greasy sheepskin coat but not to strike him -- a trick Nikita
much appreciated.
After a drink of the cold water the horse sighed, moving his strong wet lips from the hairs of
which transparent drops fell into the trough; then standing still as if in thought, he suddenly gave a
loud snort.
"If you don't want more, you needn't. But don't go asking for any later," said Nikita quite
seriously and fully explaining his conduct to Mukhorty. Then he ran back to the shed pulling the
playful young horse, who wanted to gambol all over the yard, by the rein.
There was no one else in the yard except a stranger, the cook's husband, who had come for
the holiday.
"Go and ask which sledge is to be harnessed -- the wide one or the small one -- there's a good
fellow!"
The cook's husband went into the house, which stood on an iron foundation and was iron-
roofed, and soon returned saying that the little one was to be harnessed. By that time Nikita had put
the collar and brass-studded bellyband on Mukhorty and, carrying a light, painted shaftbow in one
hand, was leading the horse with the other up to two sledges that stood in the shed.
"All right, let it be the little one!" he said, backing the intelligent horse, which all the time kept
pretending to bite him, into the shafts, and with the aid of the cook's husband he proceeded to
harness. When everything was nearly ready and only the reins had to be adjusted, Nikita sent the
other man to the shed for some straw and to the barn for a drugget.