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Then he frowned, glanced shrewdly at the structures in question, and continued softly: "I may say in passing that the place is MINE." "Yes, mine. At all events, so it used to be." And he pulled a grimace as though he had got the toothache before adding with an air of command: "Come! I will pump out the water, and YOU shall carry it to the entrance-steps and fill the water-butts.
He made long strides, and two or three times grinned as if thinking of something highly amusing; and once or twice he began to whistle and checked himself. He looked approvingly at the tall building and its solidly balustraded entrance-steps as he approached it, and when he entered the red-carpeted hall he gave greeting to a small mulatto boy in livery. "Hello, Tom!
A man stood on the threshold for a moment while the butler behind him arranged the collar of his fur overcoat. The high light in the portico flung the shadows of both down the crimson carpet laid on the entrance-steps. Snow had fallen and covered the edges of the carpet, which divided it like a cascade of blood pouring from the hall into the street.
She hardly dared to conjecture that it was Baubie Wishart's first visit to that place, but as she stood on the entrance-steps and shook out her skirts with a sense of relief, she breathed a sincere hope that it might be the child's last. A cab was waiting. Baubie, to her intense delight and no less astonishment, was requested to occupy the front seat.
Moreover, all the windows of the latter were small, and in their green panes, as they confronted the world, there was a timid and suspicious air, while, in particular, the three windows which faced upon the courtyard had iron bars to them. Lastly, there were posted, sentinel-like on the entrance-steps, two water-butts as a precaution against fire. "What think you of the place?"
I was the first to jump into the carriage and to take one of the hinder seats. The high back of the carriage prevented me from actually seeing her, yet I knew by instinct that Mamma was still there. "Shall I look at her again or not?" I said to myself. "Well, just for the last time," and I peeped out towards the entrance-steps.
Snow was falling, dimming the gas jets at the corner and half-veiling, half-disclosing the imposing entrance-porch of a marble church. The doors were closed; the edifice dark. As the eyes of the onlookers became accustomed to the half-lights, they were aware of a huddle of clothes against the iron railing that outlined the curve of the three broad entrance-steps.
Again two carriages stood at the front door of the house at Petrovskoe. In one of them sat Mimi, the two girls, and their maid, with the bailiff, Jakoff, on the box, while in the other a britchka sat Woloda, myself, and our servant Vassili. Papa, who was to follow us to Moscow in a few days, was standing bareheaded on the entrance-steps.
She passed up, wondering a little, through the gatehouse, and turned into the gravel sweep; and there stopped short at the sight of a great crowd of men and women and children, assembled in dead silence. Some one was standing at the entrance-steps, with his head bent as if he were talking to those nearest him in a low voice.
You, Sir Robert, shall squire me to the hall, and Lord Seymour must even content himself with playing the gallant to good Mistress Ashley"; and, leaning on the arm of the now pacified Dudley, the self-willed girl tripped lightly up the entrance-steps. Self-willed and thoughtless even rude and hoydenish we may think her in these days of gentler manners and more guarded speech.
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