Soap-Bubble Stories Part 13

"It's one of the secrets of the lake," said Volodia. "That's my opinion; it's lying snugly at the bottom there; and it's no good looking for it anywhere else."

But Mr. Olsheffsky continued his enquiries.

One day, just as Daria and Var-Vara were about to start for a morning walk--Elena and Boris having gone for a drive with their father--an old man in a rough sheep-skin coat and plaited bark shoes came up to the house door, and taking off his high felt hat respectfully, asked if he could speak to the _Barin_.[D]

[D] Master.

"The master has gone out," said Var-Vara, "but I daresay you can see him in the afternoon. Have you anything particular to ask him?"

"Nothing to ask, but something to show," and the old man blinked his eyes cunningly.

"Not the wooden box!" screamed Daria. "Oh, let's go at once! Come, Var-Vara! _What_ a surprise for papa when he gets back! _Is_ it the wooden box? You might tell me," cried Daria, fixing her blue eyes on the old _mujik_'s face pleadingly.

"It may be, and it mayn't be," replied the old man. "You may come along with me if you like, Daria Andreevna. I'll show you the way to where I live--near the forest, you know. Of course, I've heard all about the reward," he continued, "and as I was clearing a bit of my yard this morning, what should I find but a heap of something hard--pebbles, and drift, and sticks, and such like. When I came to sorting it out--for I thought, 'Why waste good wood, when you can burn it? the good G.o.d doesn't like waste'--I struck against the corner of something hard, and there was a----. Well, what do you think, Daria Andreevna?"

"A box! A box!" cried Daria, seizing one of the old man's hands, and dancing round him in an ecstasy of delight.

"Not at all, Daria Andreevna! The legs of an old chair."

Daria's face fell. "I don't see why you come to tell papa you've found an old chair!" she said crossly.

"Stop a bit, _Matoushka_. There's more to come. Where was I?"

"The chair! You'd just found it," said Daria, pulling at his hand impatiently.

"So I had. A chair! Well, it had no back, and as I pulled it out it felt heavy, very heavy. It wasn't much to look at--a poor chair I should call it--and I thought, '_This_ isn't much of a find;' but there inside it was something sticking as tight as wax!"

"The box!" cried Daria, "I felt sure of it!" and seizing Var-Vara by one hand, and the _mujik_ by the other, she dragged them down the street, the old peasant remonstrating and grumbling.

"Not so fast, Daria Andreevna!" said Var-Vara, gasping for breath at the sudden rush. "Let Ivan go first; he knows the way!"

Daria could scarcely control her impatience during the walk.

"Make haste, Var-Vara! we shall never get there," she kept crying; and old Var-Vara, who was stout, and had on a heavy fur pelisse, arrived at the hut in a state of breathless exhaustion.

"Ae! Ae! what a child it is! Show her the box now, Ivan, or we shall have no peace."

Ivan went to the corner of his hut, where a large object stood on the top of the whitewashed stove under a red and yellow pocket-handkerchief.

He carefully uncovered it, and stepping back a few paces said proudly,

"What do you think of _that_, now?"

It was the box, safe and unhurt, Madame Olsheffsky's name still on it in scratched white letters.

Daria was wild with joy, and almost alarmed Ivan with her excitement.

She danced about the room, threw her arms round his neck, and finally persuaded him to carry the box to Volodia's house, so that it might be there as a delightful surprise to her father on his return.

CHAPTER IX.

The children, Volodia and his wife, Var-Vara, and Adam; all stood round eagerly as Andre Olsheffsky superintended the forcing open of the precious box.

"It's my belief the papers will be a pulp," whispered Volodia. "We must be ready to stand by the _Barin_ when he finds out the disappointment."

But the papers were not hurt. The box contained another tin-lined case, in which the parchments had lain securely, and though damaged in appearance, they were as legible as the day on which they were first written.

"Oh, papa, I _am_ so glad!" shouted Boris and Daria; and Elena silently took her father's hand.

"I always thought the _Barin_ would have his own again," cried Volodia triumphantly, forgetting that only a moment before he had been full of dismal prophecies.

Adam and Var-Vara wept for joy, and Ivan stood by smiling complacently. He felt that all this happiness had been brought about entirely by his own exertions, and he already had visions of the manner in which he would employ the handsome reward.

"No more troubling about my old age," he thought. "I shall have as comfortable a life as the best of them."

That evening Mr. Olsheffsky started for Moscow, carrying the parchments with him.

The two months of his absence seemed very long to the children, though they heard from him constantly; and there were great rejoicings when he returned with the news that their affairs had at last been satisfactorily settled. Mikhail Paulovitch had withdrawn his claim, and the great house was their own again.

All the peasants of the neighbourhood came in a body to congratulate them. Those who could not get into Volodia's little sitting-room remained standing outside, and looked in respectfully through the window; while the spokesman read a long speech he had prepared for the occasion.

Mr. Olsheffsky made an appropriate reply, and then, turning to Volodia and the old servants, he thanked them in a few simple words for their goodness to the children.

"You might have knocked me flat down with a birch twig," said Uncle Volodia afterwards, when talking it over with Adam. "The idea of thanking _us_ for what was nothing at all but a real pleasure! He's a good man, the _Barin_!"

The springtime found the children and their father settled once more in their old home, with Adam, Var-Vara, and Alexis; and life flowing on very much as it had always done, except for the absence of the gentle, motherly, Anna Olsheffsky.

Uncle Volodia continued to look after his shop with zeal; and the two rooms with the gilt furniture, which Mr. Olsheffsky had insisted on his not removing, became objects of the greatest pride and joy to him.

He never allowed anyone but himself to dust them, and in spare moments he polished the looking-gla.s.s with a piece of leather, kept carefully for the purpose in a cigar box.

"It's a great pleasure to me," he remarked one day to a neighbour, "to think that when I leave this house to Boris Andreevitch--as I intend to do, after old Maria--it will have two rooms that are fit for_any_one of the family to sleep in. He'll never have to be ashamed of _them_!"

On his seventieth birthday, Elena--now grown a tall slim young lady, with grave brown eyes--persuaded him that it was really time to take a little rest, and enjoy himself.

He thereupon sold his stock, and devoted himself to gardening in the yard at the back of his house; where he would sit on summer evenings smoking his pipe, in the midst of giant dahlias and sunflowers.

Here Daria often came with Boris and Tulipan; and sitting by Uncle Volodia's side, listened to the well-known stories she had heard since her babyhood--always ending up with the same words in a tone of great solemnity--

"And _this_, children, is a true story, every word of it!"

THE ANGEL AND THE LILIES.

A Norwegian Story.

It was a room at the top of a rough wooden house in Norway. Though it was only a garret, it was all very white and clean; and little Erik Svenson lay in the small bed facing the barred window, through which the moonbeams streamed till they seemed to turn the walls into polished silver.