cherries, and for
some reason it seemed to her that it would be like that all her
life, with no change, no end to it.

Some one came out of the house and stood on the steps; it was
Alexandr Timofeitch, or, as he was always called, Sasha, who had
come from Moscow ten days before and was staying with them. Years
ago a distant relation of the grandmother, a gentleman's widow
called Marya Petrovna, a thin, sickly little woman who had sunk
into poverty, used to come to the house to ask for assistance. She
had a son Sasha. It used for some reason to be said that he had
talent as an artist, and when his mother died Nadya's grandmother
had, for the salvation of her soul, sent him to the Komissarovsky
school in Moscow; two years later he went into the school of painting,
spent nearly fifteen years there, and only just managed to scrape
through the leaving examination in the section of architecture. He
did not set up as an architect, however, but took a job at a
lithographer's. He used to come almost every year, usually very
ill, to stay with Nadya's grandmother to rest and recover.

He was wearing now a frock-coat buttoned up, and shabby canvas
trousers, crumpled into creases at the bottom. And his shirt had
not been ironed and he had somehow all over a look of not being
fresh. He was very thin, with big eyes, long thin fingers and a
swarthy bearded face, and all the same he was handsome. With the
Shumins he was like one of the family, and in their house felt he
was at home. And the room in which he lived when he was there had
for years been called Sasha's room. Standing on the steps he saw
Nadya, and went up to her.

"It's nice here," he said.

"Of course it's nice, you ought to stay here till the autumn."

"Yes, I expect it will come to that. I dare say I shall stay with
you till September."

He laughed for no reason, and sat down beside her.

"I'm sitting gazing at mother," said Nadya. "She looks so young
from here! My mother has her weaknesses, of course," she added,
after a pause, "but still she is an exceptional woman."

"Yes, she is very nice . . ." Sasha agreed. "Your mother, in her
own way of course, is a very good and sweet woman, but . . . how
shall I say? I went early this morning into your kitchen and there
I found four servants sleeping on the floor, no bedsteads, and rags
for bedding, stench, bugs, beetles . . . it is just as it was twenty
years ago, no change at all. Well, Granny, God bless her, what