"Look here, little mother, the country-women have taken it into their
heads to light fires with straw, and as that might be the cause of a
misfortune, I assembled my officers, and I ordered them to watch that
the women do not make fires with straw, but rather with faggots and
brambles."

"And why were you obliged to shut up Polashka?" his wife asked him. "Why
was the poor girl obliged to stay in the kitchen till we came back?"

Iván Kouzmitch was not prepared for such a question; he stammered some
incoherent words.

Vassilissa Igorofna instantly understood that her husband had deceived
her, but as she could not at that moment get anything out of him, she
forebore questioning him, and spoke of some pickled cucumbers which
Akoulina Pamphilovna knew how to prepare in a superlative manner. All
night long Vassilissa Igorofna lay awake trying to think what her
husband could have in his head that she was not permitted to know.

The morrow, on her return from mass, she saw Iwán Ignatiitch busy
clearing the cannon of the rags, small stones, bits of wood,
knuckle-bones, and all kinds of rubbish that the little boys had crammed
it with.

"What can these warlike preparations mean?" thought the Commandant's
wife. "Can it be that they are afraid of an attack by the Kirghiz; but
then is it likely that Iván Kouzmitch would hide from me such a trifle?"

She called Iwán Ignatiitch, determined to have out of him the secret
which was provoking her feminine curiosity.