He was at least quite human.
Before going to bed we drank one another's healths.
V
"HAVE YOU A LIGHT HAND?"
This is not simply a matter of making pastry, as you shall see.
I was tramping along a Black Sea road one night, and was wondering
where I should find a shelter, when suddenly a little voice cried
out to me from the darkness of the steppe. I stopped and looked and
listened. In a minute a little boy in a red shirt and a grey sheepskin
hat came careering towards me, and called out: "Do you want a place
to sleep? My mother's coffee-house is the best you'll find. The
coffee-house down the hill is nothing to it. There it is, that dark
house you passed. I am out gathering wood for the fire, but I shall
come in a minute."
Sharp boy! He was only eight years old. How did he guess my need so
well?
I retraced my footsteps very happily, and came to the dark inn I had
missed. It stood fifty yards back from the road, and had no light
except what glimmered from the embers of a wood fire. At the door was
a parrot that cried out, "Choozhoi, choozhoi, choozhoi preeshhol"--"A
stranger, a stranger, a stranger has arrived."
The mother, a pugnacious gossip with arms akimbo, looked at me with
perturbed pleasure. "Are you a beggar or a customer?" she asked.
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