"Well, you didn't expect me, eh?" said Stepan Arkadyevitch, getting out of the sledge, splashed with mud on the bridge of his nose, on his cheek, and on his eyebrows, but radiant with health and good spirits.

" I've come to see you in the first place," he said, embracing and kissing him, "to have some stand-shooting second, and to sell the forest at Ergushovo third.

" "Delightful! What a spring we're having! How ever did you get along in a sledge?" "In a cart it would have been worse still, Konstantin Dmitrievitch," answered the driver, who knew him.