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SOFA SLIPCOVERS : old at the sofa slipcovers So I lay under the bush at one side and looked at the boys. A small pot was hanging over one of the fires; in it potatoes were cooking. Pavlusha was looking after them, and on his knees he was trying them by poking a splinter of wood into sofa slipcovers boiling water. Fedya was lying leaning on his elbow, and smoothing out the skirts of his coat. Ilyusha was sitting beside Kostya, and still kept blinking constrainedly. Kostya's head drooped despondently, and he looked away into the distance. Vanya did not stir under his rug. I pretended to be asleep. Little by little, the boys began talking again. At first they gossiped of one thing and another, the work of to-morrow, the horses; but suddenly Fedya turned to Ilyusha, and, as though taking
SOFA SLIPCOVERS : sofa slipcovers again an interrupted conversation, asked him: 'Come then, so you've seen the domovoy?' 'No, I didn't see him, and no one ever can see him,' answered Ilyusha, in a weak hoarse voice, the sound of which was wonderfully in keeping with the expression of his face; 'I heard him.... Yes, and not I alone.' 'Where does he live--in your place?' asked Pavlusha. 'In the old paper-mill.' 'Why, do you go to the factory?' 'Of course we do. My brother Avdushka and I, we are paper-glazers.' 'I say--factory-hands!' 'Well, how did you hear sofa slipcovers then?' asked Fedya. 'It was like this. It happened that I and my brother Avdushka, with Fyodor of Mihyevska, and Ivashka the Squint-eyed, and the other Ivashka who comes from the Red Hills, and Ivashka of Suhorukov too--and there
SOFA SLIPCOVERS : were some other boys there as well--there were ten of us boys there altogether--the whole shift, that is--it happened that we spent the night at the paper-mill; that's to say, it didn't happen, but Nazarov, the overseer, kept us. 'Why,' said he, "should you waste time going home, boys; there's a lot of work to-morrow, so don't go home, boys." So we stopped, and were all lying down together, and Avdushka had just begun to say, "I say, boys, suppose the domovoy sofa slipcovers to come?" And before he'd finished saying so, some one sofa slipcovers began walking over our heads; we were lying down below, and he began walking upstairs overhead, where the wheel is. We listened: he walked; the boards seemed to be bending under him, they creaked so; then he crossed over, above
SOFA SLIPCOVERS : our heads; all of a sudden the water began to drip and drip over the wheel; the wheel rattled and rattled and again began to turn, though the sluices of the conduit above had been let down. We wondered who could have lifted them up sofa slipcovers that the water could run; any way, the wheel turned and turned a little, and then stopped. Then he went to the door overhead and began coming down-stairs, and came down like this, not hurrying himself; the stairs seemed to groan under him too.... Well, he came right down to our door, and waited and sofa slipcovers ... and all of a sudden the door simply flew open. We were in a fright; we looked-- there was nothing.... Suddenly what if the net on one of the vats
SOFA SLIPCOVERS : didn't begin moving; it got up, and went rising and ducking and moving in the air as though some one were stirring with it, and then it was in its place again. Then, at another vat, a hook came off its nail, and then was on its nail again; and then it seemed as if some one came to the door, and suddenly coughed and choked like a sheep, but so loudly!... We all fell down in a heap and huddled against one another.... Just weren't we sofa slipcovers a fright that night!' 'I say!' murmured Pavel, 'what did he cough for?' 'I don't know; perhaps sofa slipcovers was the damp.' All were silent for a little. 'Well,' inquired Fedya, 'are the potatoes done?' Pavlusha tried them. 'No, they are raw.... My, what a splash!' he added, turning his face in
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