y.

In the same manner, Anna goes up to the other members of the family,
plumps down at their feet, and begs forgiveness. She only misses
out Markovna to whom, not being one of the gentry, she does not
feel it necessary to bow down.

Another half-hour passes in stillness and tranquillity. The "Neva"
is by now lying on the sofa, and Pavel Vassilitch, holding up his
finger, repeats by heart some Latin verses he has learned in his
childhood. Styopa stares at the finger with the wedding ring, listens
to the unintelligible words, and dozes; he rubs his eyelids with
his fists, and they shut all the tighter.

"I am going to bed . . ." he says, stretching and yawning.

"What, to bed?" says Pelageya Ivanovna. "What about supper before
the fast?"

"I don't want any."

"Are you crazy?" says his mother in alarm. "How can you go without
your supper before the fast? You'll have nothing but Lenten food
all through the fast!"

Pavel Vassilitch is scared too.

"Yes, yes, my boy," he says. "For seven weeks mother will give you
nothing but Lenten food. You can't miss the last supper before the
fast."

"Oh dear, I am sleepy," says Styopa peevishly.

"Since that is how it is, lay the supper quickly," Pavel Vassilitch
cries in a fluster. "Anna, why are you sitting there, silly? Make
haste and lay the table."

Pelageya Ivanovna clasps her hands and runs into the kitchen with
an expression as though the house were on fire.

"Make haste, make haste," is heard all over the house. "Styopotchka
is sleepy. Anna! Oh dear me, what is one to do? Make haste."

Five minutes later the table is laid. Again the cats, arching their
spines, and stretching themselves with their tails in the air, come
into the dining-room. . . . The family begin supper. . . . No one
is hungry, everyone's stomach is overfull, but yet they must eat.

THE OLD HOUSE

_(A Story told by a Houseowner)_

THE old house had to be pulled down that a new one might be built
in its place. I led the architect through the empty rooms, and
between our business talk told him various stories. The tattered
wallpapers, the dingy windows, the dark stoves, all bore the traces
of recent habitation and evoked memories. On that staircase, for
instance, drunken men were once carrying down a dead body when they
stumbled and flew headlong downstairs together with the coffin; the
living were badly bruised, while the dead man looked very serious,
as though nothing had happened, and