n master or a
member of the Zemstvo? O Mother Russia! O Mother Russia! What a
burden of idle and useless people you still carry! How many like
me are upon you, long-suffering Mother!"

And from the fact that he did nothing he drew generalizations,
seeing in it a sign of the times.

"When we are married let us go together into the country, my precious;
there we will work! We will buy ourselves a little piece of land
with a garden and a river, we will labour and watch life. Oh, how
splendid that will be!"

He took off his hat, and his hair floated in the wind, while she
listened to him and thought: "Good God, I wish I were home!"

When they were quite near the house they overtook Father Andrey.

"Ah, here's father coming," cried Andrey Andreitch, delighted, and
he waved his hat. "I love my dad really," he said as he paid the
cabman. "He's a splendid old fellow, a dear old fellow."

Nadya went into the house, feeling cross and unwell, thinking that
there would be visitors all the evening, that she would have to
entertain them, to smile, to listen to the fiddle, to listen to all
sorts of nonsense, and to talk of nothing but the wedding.

Granny, dignified, gorgeous in her silk dress, and haughty as she
always seemed before visitors, was sitting before the samovar.
Father Andrey came in with his sly smile.

"I have the pleasure and blessed consolation of seeing you in
health," he said to Granny, and it was hard to tell whether he was
joking or speaking seriously.

IV

The wind was beating on the window and on the roof; there was a
whistling sound, and in the stove the house spirit was plaintively
and sullenly droning his song. It was past midnight; everyone in
the house had gone to bed, but no one was asleep, and it seemed all
the while to Nadya as though they were playing the fiddle below.
There was a sharp bang; a shutter must have been torn off. A minute
later Nina Ivanovna came in in her nightgown, with a candle.

"What was the bang, Nadya?" she asked.

Her mother, with her hair in a single plait and a timid smile on
her face, looked older, plainer, smaller on that stormy night. Nadya
remembered that quite a little time ago she had thought her mother
an exceptional woman and had listened with pride to the things she
said; and now she could not remember those things, everything that
came into her mind was so feeble and useless.

In the stove was the sound of several bass voices in chorus, and
she even he