'If you're ready, let's go,' said Vasili Andreevich. 'And as to
separating, don't you allow it, Grandfather. You got everything together
and you're the master. Go to the Justice of the Peace. He'll say how
things should be done.'

'He carries on so, carries on so,' the old man continued in a whining
tone. 'There's no doing anything with him. It's as if the devil
possessed him.'

Nikita having meanwhile finished his fifth tumbler of tea laid it on
its side instead of turning it upside down, hoping to be offered a sixth
glass. But there was no more water in the samovar, so the hostess did
not fill it up for him. Besides, Vasili Andreevich was putting his
things on, so there was nothing for it but for Nikita to get up too, put
back into the sugar-basin the lump of sugar he had nibbled all round,
wipe his perspiring face with the skirt of his sheepskin, and go to put
on his overcoat.

Having put it on he sighed deeply, thanked his hosts, said good-bye,
and went out of the warm bright room into the cold dark passage, through
which the wind was howling and where snow was blowing through the cracks
of the shaking door, and from there into the yard.

Petrushka stood in his sheepskin in the middle of the yard by his horse,
repeating some lines from Paulson's primer. He said with a smile:

'Storms with mist the sky conceal,
Snowy circles wheeling wild.
Now like savage beast 'twill howl,
And now 'tis wailing like a child.'