5. The Flight

“Your father and mother are very happy to have such a child,” said the Envoy.

Calmer, stronger, they came down from the hay-stack; a few steps more, and they reached, still descending, a hedge surrounding a little valley.

“Here is the stable,” said Maroussia, “let us go down a little farther, help me lift up the bar of the door. Here are the oxen, do you see them?”

“I see them, they are magnificent!”

The two oxen, lying on the ground, remained motionless like two mountains. Maroussia stroked their horned heads with her little hands. A friendly, gentle low answered the little girl’s caresses.

“Chut! chut!” said Maroussia. “You must follow me very quietly. Be quick!” It was plain that these oxen understood very well the language of their little mistress, for they arose without noise and followed her.

“They are much larger than I am,” said Maroussia, laughing, “and yet we are the same age.”

The wagon loaded with hay was not very far.

“Now let us yoke them,” said Maroussia, when they came near it, and the oxen were soon put to the wagon.

“Be quick! Why do you look at me?”

“Because you are so small,” said the Envoy, “so small. One would take you more easily for a little lark, made to fly and sing in the steppe, than for a person having charge of serious affairs.”

He was right. The little girl appeared still smaller in the midst of this vast expanse of verdure, by the side of this giant of the Setch.

“Ah! How I wish I were larger!” Maroussia sighed. “Stop! Here is mother’s handkerchief. I am going to put it on my head as grown-up people do, then I will seem older. Look! Is it not so?”

Her large eyes shone out from under the brown handkerchief which entirely covered her golden head and little shoulders.

The Envoy looked at her very tenderly and smiled. For a moment he either could not or would not speak. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, very low, you might have thought that it was not his own.