"Tale of the Military Secret"

Page 10

The bourgeois leave, and this time they are not quick to return. When they come, they are shaking their heads.

"No," they say, "our leader, Chief Bourgeois. The boy turned pale, but stood proud. He did not reveal to us the Military Secret because his word is so firm. And when we left, he lay down on the floor and pressed his ear to the hard, cold, stone floor and--whether you believe it or not, O, Chief Bourgeois--he smiled in such a way that we, the bourgeois, shivered and became frightened that perhaps he hears our inescapable destruction moving along the secret pathways."

"It's not secret pathways. It's the Red Army galloping!" excitedly shouted out the Octobrist Karasikov, unable to restrain himself.

And he waved his hand with an imaginary sabre so fiercely that even the girl who just recently--hopping on one leg--had fearlessly teased him as "Krasik-rugasik", looked at him warily and, just to be safe, moved away a little further.

Natka interrupted the story because just then, the lunch bell rang.

"Finish the story!" Alka ordered in a commanding voice, looking at her with a hurt expression.

"Finish the story!" persuasively pronounced the red-faced Ioska. "And then we'll get in line quickly."

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