wling of his vowels. "It
is high time that we were moving. It doesn't matter who the young man
may be."

And with that they slip-slopped across to the entrance gates, while
Gubin gazed after them with knitted brows, and as the brothers were
disappearing through the wicket said carelessly:

"The old sheep! They live solely by the wits of their stepmother, and
if it were not for her, they would long ago have come to grief. Yes,
she is a woman beyond words clever. Once upon a time there were three
brothers--Peter, Alexis, and Jonah; but, unfortunately, Alexis got
killed in a brawl. A fine, tall fellow HE was, whereas these two are a
pair of gluttons, like everyone else in this town. Not for nothing do
three loaves figure on the municipal arms! Now, to work again! Or shall
we take a rest?"

Here there stepped on to the veranda a tall, well-grown young woman in
an open pink bodice and a blue skirt who, shading blue eyes with her
hand, scanned the courtyard and the steps, and said with some
diffidence:

"Good day, Yakov Vasilitch."

With a good-humoured glance in response, and his mouth open, Gubin
waved a hand in greeting:

"Good day to YOU, Nadezhda Ivanovna," he replied. "How are you this
morning?"

Somehow this made her blush, and cross her arms upon her ample bosom,
while her kindly, rounded, eminently Russian face evinced the ghost of
a shy smile. At the same time, it was a face wherein not a single
feature was of a kind to remain fixed in the memory, a face as vacant
as though nature had forgotten to stamp thereon a single wish. Hence,
even when the woman smiled there seemed to remain a doubt whether the
smile had really materialised.

"How is Natalia Vasilievna?" continued Gubin.

"Much as usual," the woman answered softly.

Whereafter hesitantly, and with downcast eyes, she essayed to cross the
courtyard. As she passed me I caught a whiff of raspberries and
currants.

Disappearing into the grey mist through a small door with iron staples,
she soon reissued thence with a hencoop, and, seating herself on the
steps of the doorway, and setting the coop on her knees, took between
her two large palms some fluttering, chirping, downy, golden chicks,
and raised them to her ruddy lips and cheeks with a murmur of:

"Oh my little darlings! Oh my little darlings!"

And in her voice, somehow, there was a note as of intoxication, of
abandonment. Meanwhile dull, reddish sunbeams were beginning to peer
through the