outishness and nothing more. Yes!"

Since Nikitin had been in love with Masha, everything at the
Shelestovs' pleased him: the house, the garden, and the evening
tea, and the wickerwork chairs, and the old nurse, and even the
word "loutishness," which the old man was fond of using. The only
thing he did not like was the number of cats and dogs and the
Egyptian pigeons, who moaned disconsolately in a big cage in the
verandah. There were so many house-dogs and yard-dogs that he had
only learnt to recognize two of them in the course of his acquaintance
with the Shelestovs: Mushka and Som. Mushka was a little mangy dog
with a shaggy face, spiteful and spoiled. She hated Nikitin: when
she saw him she put her head on one side, showed her teeth, and
began: "Rrr . . . nga-nga-nga . . . rrr . . . !" Then she would get
under his chair, and when he would try to drive her away she would
go off into piercing yaps, and the family would say: "Don't be
frightened. She doesn't bite. She is a good dog."

Som was a tall black dog with long legs and a tail as hard as a
stick. At dinner and tea he usually moved about under the table,
and thumped on people's boots and on the legs of the table with his
tail. He was a good-natured, stupid dog, but Nikitin could not
endure him because he had the habit of putting his head on people's
knees at dinner and messing their trousers with saliva. Nikitin had
more than once tried to hit him on his head with a knife-handle,
to flip him on the nose, had abused him, had complained of him, but
nothing saved his trousers.

After their ride the tea, jam, rusks, and butter seemed very nice.
They all drank their first glass in silence and with great relish;
over the second they began an argument. It was always Varya who
started the arguments at tea; she was good-looking, handsomer than
Masha, and was considered the cleverest and most cultured person
in the house, and she behaved with dignity and severity, as an
eldest daughter should who has taken the place of her dead mother
in the house. As the mistress of the house, she felt herself entitled
to wear a dressing-gown in the presence of her guests, and to call
the officers by their surnames; she looked on Masha as a little
girl, and talked to her as though she were a schoolmistress. She
used to speak of herself as an old maid--so she was certain she
would marry.

Every conversation, even about the weather, she invariably turned
into an argument. She had a p