aintly stir the tender breezes
. . . . Faintly rustle in the treetops. . . . Sing, sing, Alyosha!
Verotchka, shall we sing you Schubert's Serenade?" (He sings.)

His performance is cut short by a sudden fit of coughing. "Tphoo!
Verotchka, tell Aksinya to unlock the gate for us!" (A pause.)
"Verotchka! don't be lazy, get up, darling!" (He stands on a stone
and looks in at the window.) "Verotchka, my dumpling; Verotchka,
my poppet . . . my little angel, my wife beyond compare, get up and
tell Aksinya to unlock the gate for us! You are not asleep, you
know. Little wife, we are really so done up and exhausted that we're
not in the mood for jokes. We've trudged all the way from the
station! Don't you hear? Ah, hang it all!" (He makes an effort to
climb up to the window and falls down.) "You know this isn't a nice
trick to play on a visitor! I see you are just as great a schoolgirl
as ever, Vera, you are always up to mischief!"

"Perhaps Vera Stepanovna is asleep," says Laev.

"She isn't asleep! I bet she wants me to make an outcry and wake
up the whole neighbourhood. I'm beginning to get cross, Vera! Ach,
damn it all! Give me a leg up, Alyosha; I'll get in. You are a
naughty girl, nothing but a regular schoolgirl. . . Give me a hoist."

Puffing and panting, Laev gives him a leg up, and Kozyavkin climbs
in at the window and vanishes into the darkness within.

"Vera!" Laev hears a minute later, "where are you? . . . D--damnation!
Tphoo! I've put my hand into something! Tphoo!"

There is a rustling sound, a flapping of wings, and the desperate
cackling of a fowl.

"A nice state of things," Laev hears. "Vera, where on earth did
these chickens come from? Why, the devil, there's no end of them!
There's a basket with a turkey in it. . . . It pecks, the nasty
creature."

Two hens fly out of the window, and cackling at the top of their
voices, flutter down the village street.

"Alyosha, we've made a mistake!" says Kozyavkin in a lachrymose
voice. "There are a lot of hens here. . . . I must have mistaken
the house. Confound you, you are all over the place, you cursed
brutes!"

"Well, then, make haste and come down. Do you hear? I am dying of
thirst!"

"In a minute. . . . I am looking for my cape and portfolio."

"Light a match."

"The matches are in the cape. . . . I was a crazy idiot to get into
this place. The cottages are exactly alike; the devil himself
couldn't tell them apart in the dark. Aie, the turkey's peck