breathing of a sleeping baby could be heard.

CHAPTER V

The next morning Bazarov woke up earlier than any one and went out of
the house. 'Oh, my!' he thought, looking about him, 'the little place
isn't much to boast of!' When Nikolai Petrovitch had divided the land
with his peasants, he had had to build his new manor-house on four
acres of perfectly flat and barren land. He had built a house, offices,
and farm buildings, laid out a garden, dug a pond, and sunk two wells;
but the young trees had not done well, very little water had collected
in the pond, and that in the wells tasted brackish. Only one arbour of
lilac and acacia had grown fairly well; they sometimes had tea and
dinner in it. In a few minutes Bazarov had traversed all the little
paths of the garden; he went into the cattle-yard and the stable,
routed out two farm-boys, with whom he made friends at once, and set
off with them to a small swamp about a mile from the house to look for
frogs.

'What do you want frogs for, sir?' one of the boys asked him.

'I'll tell you what for,' answered Bazarov, who possessed the special
faculty of inspiring confidence in people of a lower class, though he
never tried to win them, and behaved very casually with them; 'I shall
cut the frog open, and see what's going on in his inside, and then, as
you and I are much the same as frogs, only that we walk on legs, I
shall know what's going on inside us too.'

'And what do you want to know that for?'

'So as not to make a mistake, if you're taken ill, and I have to cure
you.'

'Are you a doctor then?'

'Yes.'

'Vaska, do you hear, the gentleman says you and I are the same as
frogs, that's funny!'

'I'm afraid of frogs,' observed Vaska, a boy of seven, with a head as
white as flax, and bare feet, dressed in a grey smock with a stand-up
collar.

'What is there to be afraid of? Do they bite?'

'There, paddle into the water, philosophers,' said Bazarov.

Meanwhile Nikolai Petrovitch too had waked up, and gone in to see
Arkady, whom he found dressed. The father and son went out on to the
terrace under the shelter of the awning; near the balustrade, on the
table, among great bunches of lilacs, the samovar was already boiling.
A little girl came up, the same who had been the first to meet them at
the steps on their arrival the evening before. In a shrill voice she
said--

'Fedosya Nikolaevna is not quite well, she cannot come; she gave orders
to ask you, will