Bulba led his sons into the principal room of the hut; and two pretty
servant girls wearing coin necklaces, who were arranging the
apartment, ran out quickly. They were either frightened at the arrival
of the young men, who did not care to be familiar with anyone; or else
they merely wanted to keep up their feminine custom of screaming and
rushing away headlong at the sight of a man, and then screening their
blushes for some time with their sleeves. The hut was furnished
according to the fashion of that period--a fashion concerning which
hints linger only in the songs and lyrics, no longer sung, alas! in
the Ukraine as of yore by blind old men, to the soft tinkling of the
native guitar, to the people thronging round them--according to the
taste of that warlike and troublous time, of leagues and battles
prevailing in the Ukraine after the union. Everything was cleanly
smeared with coloured clay. On the walls hung sabres, hunting-whips,
nets for birds, fishing-nets, guns, elaborately carved powder-horns,
gilded bits for horses, and tether-ropes with silver plates. The small
window had round dull panes, through which it was impossible to see
except by opening the one moveable one. Around the windows and doors
red bands were painted. On shelves in one corner stood jugs, bottles,
and flasks of green and blue glass, carved silver cups, and gilded
drinking vessels of various makes--Venetian, Turkish, Tscherkessian,
which had reached Bulba's cabin by various roads, at third and fourth
hand, a thing common enough in those bold days. There were birch-wood
benches all around the room, a huge table under the holy pictures in
one corner, and a huge stove covered with particoloured patterns in
relief, with spaces between it and the wall. All this was quite
familiar to the two young men, who were wont to come home every year
during the dog-days, since they had no horses, and it was not
customary to allow students to ride afield on horseback. The only