ther! All the rest people stuff your
heads with is rubbish; the academy, books, primers, philosophy, and all
that, I spit upon it all!" Here Bulba added a word which is not used in
print. "But I'll tell you what is best: I'll take you to Zaporozhe
(1) this very week. That's where there's science for you! There's your
school; there alone will you gain sense."

(1) The Cossack country beyond (za) the falls (porozhe) of the
Dnieper.

"And are they only to remain home a week?" said the worn old mother
sadly and with tears in her eyes. "The poor boys will have no chance of
looking around, no chance of getting acquainted with the home where they
were born; there will be no chance for me to get a look at them."

"Enough, you've howled quite enough, old woman! A Cossack is not born
to run around after women. You would like to hide them both under your
petticoat, and sit upon them as a hen sits on eggs. Go, go, and let
us have everything there is on the table in a trice. We don't want any
dumplings, honey-cakes, poppy-cakes, or any other such messes: give us
a whole sheep, a goat, mead forty years old, and as much corn-brandy as
possible, not with raisins and all sorts of stuff, but plain scorching
corn-brandy, which foams and hisses like mad."

Bulba led his sons into the principal room of the hut; and two pretty
servant girls wearing coin necklaces, who were arranging the apartment,
ran out quickly. They were either frightened at the arrival of the young
men, who did not care to be familiar with anyone; or else they merely
wanted to keep up their feminine custom of screaming and rushing away
headlong at the sight of a man, and then screening their blushes for
some time with their sleeves. The hut was furnished according to the
fashion of that period--a fashion concerning which hints linger only in
the songs and lyrics, no longer sung, alas! in the Ukraine as of yore by
blind old men, to the soft tinkling of the native guitar, to the
people thronging round them--according to the taste of that warlike and
troublous time, of leagues and battles prevailing in the Ukraine after
the union. Everything was cleanly smeared with coloured clay. On the
walls hung sabres, hunting-whips, nets for birds, fishing-nets,
guns, elaborately carved powder-horns, gilded bits for horses, and
tether-ropes with silver plates. The small window had round dull
panes, through which it was impossible to see except by opening the one
moveable one.