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It's not the fashion for a thing to be taken out of pawn and no money paid. Besides why this indulgence? Go your way and God bless you!" Slyunka rubs his perspiring face with his sleeve and begins hotly swearing and entreating.
The days are warm now. . . . The cranes were flying in the morning, lots and lots of them." Slyunka and Ryabov, splashing cautiously through the melting snow and sticking in the mud, walk two hundred paces along the edge of the forest and there halt. Their faces wear a look of alarm and expectation of something terrible and extraordinary.
In Semyon's pothouse, which has lately changed its name and become a restaurant a title quite out of keeping with the wretched little hut with its thatch torn off its roof, and its couple of dingy windows two peasant sportsmen are sitting. One of them is called Filimon Slyunka; he is an old man of sixty, formerly a house-serf, belonging to the Counts Zavalin, by trade a carpenter.
Semyon, a sickly little man, with a pale face and a long sinewy neck, stands behind his counter, looks mournfully at the string of bread rings, and coughs meekly. "You think it over now, if you have any sense," Slyunka says to him, twitching his cheek. "You have the thing lying by unused and get no sort of benefit from it. While we need it.
"You must act fairly, Filimonushka. . . . A thing is not taken out of pawn just anyhow; you must pay the money. . . . Besides, what do you want to kill birds for? What's the use? It's Lent now you are not going to eat them." Slyunka exchanges glances with Ryabov in embarrassment, sighs, and says: "We would only go stand-shooting." "And what for? It's all foolishness.
"May you choke with my gun, you devil," says Slyunka, with his face twitching, and his shoulders, shrugging. "May you choke, you plague, you scoundrelly soul." Swearing and shaking his fists, he goes out of the tavern with Ryabov and stands still in the middle of the road. "He won't give it, the damned brute," he says, in a weeping voice, looking into Ryabov's face with an injured air.
"We must wait another five days," says Slyunka, as he comes out from behind a bush with Ryabov. "It's too early!" They go homewards, and are silent all the way. MAXIM TORTCHAKOV, a farmer in southern Russia, was driving home from church with his young wife and bringing back an Easter cake which had just been blessed.
The snow, lying white here and there on the dark brown plough-land, is lightly flecked with gold by the sun. "This time last year I went stand-shooting in Zhivki," says Slyunka, after a long silence. "I brought back three snipe." Again there follows a silence. Both stand a long time and look towards the forest, and then lazily move and walk along the muddy road from the village.
"We ought to be standing in Zhivki now," whispers Slyunka, looking with awe at Ryabov; "there's good stand-shooting there." Ryabov too looks with awe at Slyunka, with unblinking eyes and open mouth. "A lovely time," Slyunka says in a trembling whisper. "The Lord is sending a fine spring . . . and I should think the snipe are here by now. . . . Why not?
"But what do you want the gun for?" sighs Semyon, sadly shaking his head. "What sort of shooting is there now? It's still winter outside, and no game at all but crows and jackdaws." "Winter, indeed," says Slyunka, hooing the ash out of his pipe with his finger, "it is early yet of course, but you never can tell with the snipe. The snipe's a bird that wants watching.
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