| Ivan Turgenev (1818–1883). A House of Gentlefolk. |
| The Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction. 1917. |
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| Chapter III |
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| ‘HOW do you do, Marya Dmitrievna?’ cried the young man in a pleasant, ringing voice. ‘How do you like my new purchase?’ | 1 |
| Marya Dmitrievna went up to the window. | 2 |
| ‘How do you do, Woldemar! Ah, what a splendid horse! Where did you buy it?’ | 3 |
| ‘I bought it from the army contractor.… He made me pay for it too, the brigand!’ | 4 |
| ‘What’s its name?’ | 5 |
| ‘Orlando.… But it’s a stupid name; I want to change it … Eh bien, eh bien, mon garçon.… What a restless beast it is!’ The horse snorted, pawed the ground, and shook the foam off the bit. | 6 |
| ‘Lenotchka, stroke him, don’t be afraid.’ | 7 |
| The little girl stretched her hand out of the window, but Orlando suddenly reared and started. The rider with perfect self-possession gave it a cut with the whip across the neck, and keeping a tight grip with his legs forced it in spite of its opposition, to stand still again at the window. | 8 |
| ‘Prenez garde, prenez garde,’ Marya Dmitrievna kept repeating. | 9 |
| ‘Lenotchka, pat him,’ said the young man, ‘I won’t let him be perverse.’ | 10 |
| The little girl again stretched out her hand and timidly patted the quivering nostrils of the horse, who kept fidgeting and champing the bit. | 11 |
| ‘Bravo!’ cried Marya Dmitrievna, ‘but now get off and come in to us.’ | 12 |
| The rider adroitly turned his horse, gave him a touch of the spur, and galloping down the street soon reached the courtyard. A minute later he ran into the drawing-room by the door from the hall, flourishing his whip; at the same moment there appeared in the other doorway a tall, slender dark-haired girl of nineteen, Marya Dmitrievna’s eldest daughter, Lisa. | 13 |
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