"Yes I do, you tyrant!" replied Jenny with tears in her eyes. "I know it all too well!"
"And now read this," said Olga. She placed the telegram received the night before on the table and went out.
The telegram read:
"Stopping in Moscow few hours en route. Will wire date and time later. Dad."
Jenny wiped her eyes, pressed the telegram to her lips and murmured:
"Daddy, please come soon!
Dad, your Jenny isn't getting on too well!"
Two cartloads of firewood were delivered to the house of the old woman who had spanked the spry little Annie for losing the goat.
Grandma groaned and wheezed as she began to stack the logs, cursing the careless drivers who had just dumped them all anyhow.
The work was too much for her.
She was seized with a coughing fit and sat down on the steps to catch her breath. Then she picked up a watering can and hobbled off to her vegetable garden.
The only person remaining in the yard was Annie's three-year-old brother, a young man of evident energy and enterprise for, the moment Grandma was out of sight, he picked up a stick and began to beat out a tattoo on a bench and an upturned wash tub.
At this Sima Simakov, who had been hunting for the runaway goat—which could have vied with a Bengal tiger in bounding over bushes and across gullies—left one of his men at the fringe of the wood and dashed into the yard at the head of the other four.
He stuffed a handful of wild strawberries into the youngster's mouth and stuck a shiny crow's feather into his hand while his squad began feverishly stacking the logs.
Sima Simakov himself ran off round the garden fence to detain Grandma in the vegetable patch.
He stopped at a place where a clump of cherry and apple trees grew close up to the fence and peeped through a chink.
He saw that Grandma had gathered an apronful of cucumbers and was about to go back.
He tapped softly on the boards of the fence.
Grandma gave a start.
Then Sima picked up a stick and began to stir the branches of an apple tree with it.
Grandma thought she saw somebody climbing stealthily over the fence to steal apples.
She dumped her cucumbers onto the ground, pulled up a great tuft of nettles, crept over to the fence and hid behind it.
Sima Simakov peeped through the hole again, but this time he could not see the old woman.
Worried, he jumped up, caught hold of the top of the fence and began to pull himself up cautiously.
At that moment the old woman leaped out of her ambush with a triumphant whoop and lashed Sima across the hands with the nettles.
Wildly waving his hands, Sima dashed back to the gate, through which the other boys, now finished with their task, were running out.
Again, the yard was deserted but for the little boy.
He picked up a chip of wood, put it on the edge of the woodstack, and then dragged over a piece of birchbark.
Grandma found him thus occupied when she came back from the vegetable garden.
She stared with bulging eyes at the neatly stacked logs. "Who's been at work here while I was away?" she asked.
The youngster added his birchbark to the stack and said importantly:
"Can't you see, Grandma? It's me."
The milkwoman came into the yard and the two old women began to talk excitedly about the strange happenings with the water and wood.
They tried to pump the youngster but they learned very little from him.
He told them that some people had dashed into the yard, stuck sweet strawberries into his mouth, had given him a feather and even promised to catch him a hare with two ears and four legs.
Then they had stacked the firewood and run away.
Annie came into the yard.
"Annie," said Grandma, "did you see who came into our yard just now?"
"No, I was looking for the goat," Annie replied sourly. "Been running around all morning looking for her."
"They stole her!" Grandma wailed, turning to the milk-woman. "What a goat she was!
Not a goat but a regular dove.
A dove!"
"Some dove!" snorted Annie, moving away from her grandma. "When she starts tossing her horns you can't jump out of the way fast enough!
Doves don't have horns."
"Hold your tongue, Ann!
Keep quiet, you silly good-for-nothing!" cried Grandma. "I'm not saying the goat wasn't a bit high-spirited.
I wanted to sell the darling.
And my dove has flown."
At that moment the gate flew open with a screech.
Sweeping the ground with its horns, the goat galloped in and headed straight for the milkwoman.