Explore "Polikushka. a Story" by Leo Tolstoy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
That whole day no one at Pokrovskoé saw Polikéï. The mistress several times after dinner made inquiries, and Aksiutka flew down to Akulína: but Akulína said that he had not come; that the merchant must have detained him, or something had happened to the horse. "Can't he have gone lame? " she suggested. "The last time Maksim was gone four and twenty hours, -- walked the whole way. " And Aksiutka's pendulums brought back the message to the house; and Akulína thought over all the reasons for her husband's delay, and tried hard to calm her fears, but she did not succeed. Her heart was heavy, and her preparations for the next day's festival made little progress in her hands. She tormented herself all the more because the joiner's wife was convinced that she had seen him.
"A man just like Ilyitch had driven up the _proshpect,_ and then turned back again."