SILK CASHMERE : 'Look out, master, don't drown us,' observed one of the boatmen, a snubnosed young fellow in a gay print shirt. 'Get along, you swell!' said Uvar Ivanovitch. The boat pushed off. silk cashmere young men took up the oars, but Insarov was the oniy one of them who could row. Shubin suggested that they should sing some Russian song in chorus, and struck up: 'Down the river Volga' . . . Bersenyev, Zoya, and even Anna Vassilyevna, joined in--Insarov could not sing--but they did not keep together; at the third verse the singers were all wrong. Only Bersenyev tried to go on in the bass, 'Nothing on the waves is seen,' but he, too, was soon in difficulties. The boatmen looked at one another and grinned in silence. 'Eh?' said Shubin, turning to them, 'the gentlefolks can't sing,
SILK CASHMERE : you say?' The boy in the print shirt only shook his head. 'Wait a little snubnose,' retorted Shubin, 'we will show you. Zoya Nikitishna, sing us _Le lac_ of Niedermeyer. Stop rowing!' The wet oars stood still, lifted in the air like wings, and their splash died away with a tuneful drip; the boat drifted on a little, then stood still, rocking lightly on the water like a swan. Zoya affected to refuse at first. . . . '_Allons_' said Anna Vassilyevna genially. . . . Zoya took off her hat and began to sing: '_O lac, l'annee a peine a fini sa carriere_!' Her small, but pure voice, seemed to dart over the surface silk cashmere the lake; every word echoed far off in the woods; it sounded as though some
SILK CASHMERE : one were singing there, too, in a distinct, but mysterious and unearthly voice. When Zoya finished, a loud bravo was heard from an arbour near the bank, from which emerged several red-faced Germans who were picnicking at Tsaritsino. Several of them had their coats off, their ties, and even their waistcoats; and they shouted '_bis!_' with such unmannerly insistence that Anna Vassilyevna told the boatmen to row as quickly as possible to the other end of the lake. But before the boat reached the bank, silk cashmere Ivanovitch once more succeeded in surprising his friends; having noticed that in one part of the wood the echo repeated every sound with peculiar distinctness, he suddenly began to call like a quail. At first every one was startled, but they listened directly with real pleasure, especially as Uvar Ivanovitch
SILK CASHMERE : imitated the quail's cry with great correctness. Spurred on by this, he tried mewing like a cat; but this did not go off so well; and after one more quail-call, he looked at them all and stopped. Shubin threw himself on him to kiss him; he pushed him off. At that instant the boat touched the bank, and all the party got out and went on shore. Meanwhile the coachman, with the groom and the maid, had brought the baskets out of the coach, and made dinner ready on the grass under the old lime-trees. They sat down round the outspread tablecloth, and fell upon the pies and other dainties. They all had excellent appetites, while silk cashmere Vassilyevna, with unflagging hospitality, kept urging the guests to eat more, assuring them that nothing was more wholesome than
SILK CASHMERE : eating in the open air. She even encouraged Uvar Ivanovitch with such assurances. 'Don't trouble about me!' he grunted with his mouth full. 'Such silk cashmere lovely day is a God-send, indeed!' she repeated constantly. One would not have known her; she seemed fully twenty years younger. Bersenyev said as much to her. 'Yes, yes.' she said; 'I could hold my own with any one in my day.' Shubin attached himself to Zoya, and kept pouring her out wine; she refused it, he pressed her, and finished by drinking the glass himself, and again pressing her to take another; he also declared that he longed to lay his head on her knee; she would on no account permit him 'such a liberty.' Elena seemed the most serious of the party, but in her heart there was
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