ge of logs, and exactly
below it in the clear, limpid water was a shoal of broad-headed mullets.
The dew was glistening on the green bushes that looked into the water.
There was a feeling of warmth; it was comforting! What a lovely morning!
And how lovely life would have been in this world, in all likelihood, if
it were not for poverty, horrible, hopeless poverty, from which one can
find no refuge! One had only to look round at the village to remember
vividly all that had happened the day before, and the illusion of
happiness which seemed to surround them vanished instantly.

They reached the church. Marya stood at the entrance, and did not dare
to go farther. She did not dare to sit down either. Though they only
began ringing for mass between eight and nine, she remained standing the
whole time.

While the gospel was being read the crowd suddenly parted to make way
for the family from the great house. Two young girls in white frocks and
wide-brimmed hats walked in; with them a chubby, rosy boy in a sailor
suit. Their appearance touched Olga; she made up her mind from the first
glance that they were refined, well-educated, handsome people. Marya
looked at them from under her brows, sullenly, dejectedly, as though
they were not human beings coming in, but monsters who might crush her
if she did not make way for them.

And every time the deacon boomed out something in his bass voice she
fancied she heard "Ma-arya!" and she shuddered.

III

The arrival of the visitors was already known in the village, and
directly after mass a number of people gathered together in the hut. The
Leonytchevs and Matvyeitchevs and the Ilyitchovs came to inquire about
their relations who were in service in Moscow. All the lads of Zhukovo
who could read and write were packed off to Moscow and hired out as
butlers or waiters (while from the village on the other side of the
river the boys all became bakers), and that had been the custom from the
days of serfdom long ago when a certain Luka Ivanitch, a peasant from
Zhukovo, now a legendary figure, who had been a waiter in one of the
Moscow clubs, would take none but his fellow-villagers into his service,
and found jobs for them in taverns and restaurants; and from that time
the village of Zhukovo was always called among the inhabitants of the
surrounding districts Slaveytown. Nikolay had been taken to Moscow when
he was eleven, and Ivan Makaritch, one of the Matvyeitchevs, at
that time a head