uld regard my openness, as improper; but, in the
first place, it can't be concealed, and secondly, you are aware I have
always had peculiar ideas as regards the relation of father and son.
Though, of course, you would be right in blaming me. At my age.... In
short ... that ... that girl, about whom you have probably heard
already ...'

'Fenitchka?' asked Arkady easily.

Nikolai Petrovitch blushed. 'Don't mention her name aloud, please....
Well ... she is living with me now. I have installed her in the house
... there were two little rooms there. But that can all be changed.'

'Goodness, daddy, what for?'

'Your friend is going to stay with us ... it would be awkward ...'

'Please don't be uneasy on Bazarov's account. He's above all that.'

'Well, but you too,' added Nikolai Petrovitch. 'The little lodge is so
horrid--that's the worst of it.'

'Goodness, dad,' interposed Arkady, 'it's as if you were apologising; I
wonder you're not ashamed.'

'Of course, I ought to be ashamed,' answered Nikolai Petrovitch,
flushing more and more.

'Nonsense, dad, nonsense; please don't!' Arkady smiled affectionately.
'What a thing to apologise for!' he thought to himself, and his heart
was filled with a feeling of condescending tenderness for his kind,
soft-hearted father, mixed with a sense of secret superiority. 'Please,
stop,' he repeated once more, instinctively revelling in a
consciousness of his own advanced and emancipated condition.

Nikolai Petrovitch glanced at him from under the fingers of the hand
with which he was still rubbing his forehead, and there was a pang in
his heart.... But at once he blamed himself for it.

'Here are our meadows at last,' he said after a long silence.

'And that in front is our forest, isn't it?' asked Arkady.

'Yes. Only I have sold the timber. This year they will cut it down.'

'Why did you sell it?'

'The money was needed; besides, that land is to go to the peasants.'

'Who don't pay you their rent?'

'That's their affair; besides, they will pay it some day.'

'I am sorry about the forest,' observed Arkady, and he began to look
about him.

The country through which they were driving could not be called
picturesque. Fields upon fields stretched all along to the very
horizon, now sloping gently upwards, then dropping down again; in some
places woods were to be seen, and winding ravines, planted with low,
scanty bushes, recalling vividly the representation of them on the
old