did the animal accomplish
its periodical journeys from the wall to the entrance gates and back
again; after which it always heaved a profound sigh, and stood with its
bony crest lowered.

Presently, from a corner of the yard that lay screened behind some
rank, pale, withered, trampled herbage a door screeched. Into the yard
there issued Nadezhda Birkin, carrying a bunch of keys, and followed by
a lady who, elderly and rotund of figure, had a few dark hairs growing
on her full and rather haughty upper lip. As the two walked towards the
cellar (Nadezhda being clad only in an under-petticoat, with a chemise
half-covering her shoulders, and slippers thrust on to bare feet), I
perceived from the languor of the younger woman's gait that she was
feeling weary indeed.

"Why do you look at us like that?" her senior inquired of me as she
drew level. And as she did so the eyes that peered at me from above the
full and, somehow, displaced-looking cheeks bid in them a dim, misty,
half-blind expression.

"That must be Peter Birkin's mother-in-law," was my unspoken reflection.

At the door of the cellar Nadezhda handed the keys to her companion,
and with a slow step which set her ample bosom swaying, and increased
the disarray of the bodice on her round, but broad, shoulders,
approached myself, and said quietly:

"Please open the gutter-sluice and let out the water into the street,
or the yard will soon be flooded. Oh, the smell of it! What is that
thing there? A rat? Oh batinshka, what a horrible mess!"

Her face had about it a drawn look, and under her eyes there were a
pair of dark patches, and in their depths the dry glitter of a person
who has spent a night of waking. True, it was a face still fresh of
hue; yet beads of sweat were standing on the forehead, and her
shoulders looked grey and heavy--as grey and heavy as unleavened bread
which the fire has coated with a thin crust, yet failed to bake
throughout.

"Please, also, open the wicket," she continued. "And, in case a lame
old beggar-woman should call, come and tell me. I am the Nadezhda
Ivanovna for whom she will inquire. Do you understand?"

From the well, at this point, there issued the words:

"Who is that speaking?"

"It is the mistress," I replied.

"What? Nadezhda? With her I have a bone to pick."

"What did he say?" the woman asked tensely as she raised her dark,
thinly pencilled brows, and made as though to go and lean over the
well. Independently of