when one sprinkles it with water. Reading the letter once
more, mother called together all the household, and in a voice broken
with emotion began explaining to us that there had been four Gundasov
brothers: one Gundasov had died as a baby; another had gone to the war,
and he, too, was dead; the third, without offence to him be it said, was
an actor; the fourth...

"The fourth has risen far above us," my mother brought out tearfully.
"My own brother, we grew up together; and I am all of a tremble, all of
a tremble!... A privy councillor with the rank of a general! How shall
I meet him, my angel brother? What can I, a foolish, uneducated
woman, talk to him about? It's fifteen years since I've seen him!
Andryushenka," my mother turned to me, "you must rejoice, little stupid!
It's a piece of luck for you that God is sending him to us!"

After we had heard a detailed history of the Gundasovs, there followed
a fuss and bustle in the place such as I had been accustomed to see only
before Christmas and Easter. The sky above and the water in the river
were all that escaped; everything else was subjected to a merciless
cleansing, scrubbing, painting. If the sky had been lower and smaller
and the river had not flowed so swiftly, they would have scoured them,
too, with bath-brick and rubbed them, too, with tow. Our walls were as
white as snow, but they were whitewashed; the floors were bright and
shining, but they were washed every day. The cat Bobtail (as a small
child I had cut off a good quarter of his tail with the knife used for
chopping the sugar, and that was why he was called Bobtail) was carried
off to the kitchen and put in charge of Anisya; Fedka was told that if
any of the dogs came near the front-door "God would punish him." But no
one was so badly treated as the poor sofas, easy-chairs, and rugs!
They had never, before been so violently beaten as on this occasion in
preparation for our visitor. My pigeons took fright at the loud thud of
the sticks, and were continually flying up into the sky.

The tailor Spiridon, the only tailor in the whole district who
ventured to make for the gentry, came over from Novostroevka. He was a
hard-working capable man who did not drink and was not without a certain
fancy and feeling for form, but yet he was an atrocious tailor. His work
was ruined by hesitation.... The idea that his cut was not fashionable
enough made him alter everything half a dozen times, walk all the way to
the