g
into the next room.

"Where are YOU off to?" he asked.

"To uncle, to bite off a piece of chalk." [2]

"Cut along, cut along! It's not for us to teach them, but for them to
teach."

THE SERVANTS IN THE HOUSE

WHEN my father married and brought home his young and inexperienced
bride, Sofya Andreyevna, to Yasnaya Polyana, Nikolai Mikhailovitch
Rumyantsef was already established as cook. Before my father's marriage
he had a salary of five rubles a month; but when my mother arrived, she
raised him to six, at which rate he continued the rest of his days; that
is, till somewhere about the end of the eighties. He was succeeded in
the kitchen by his son, Semyon Nikolayevitch, my mother's godson, and
this worthy and beloved man, companion of my childish games, still
lives with us to this day. Under my mother's supervision he prepared
my father's vegetarian diet with affectionate zeal, and without him my
father would very likely never have lived to the ripe old age he did.

Agafya Mikhailovna was an old woman who lived at first in the kitchen
of "the other house" and afterward on the home farm. Tall and thin, with
big, thoroughbred eyes, and long, straight hair, like a witch, turning
gray, she was rather terrifying, but more than anything else she was
queer.

Once upon a time long ago she had been housemaid to my
great-grandmother, Countess Pelageya Nikolayevna Tolstoy, my father's
grandmother, nee Princess Gortchakova. She was fond of telling about her
young days. She would say:

I was very handsome. When there were gentlefolks visiting at the big
house, the countess would call me, 'Gachette [Agafya], femme de chambre,
apportez-moi un mouchoir!' Then I would say, 'Toute suite, Madame la
Comtesse!' And every one would be staring at me, and couldn't take their
eyes off. When I crossed over to the annex, there they were watching
to catch me on the way. Many a time have I tricked them--ran round the
other way and jumped over the ditch. I never liked that sort of thing
any time. A maid I was, a maid I am.

After my grandmother's death, Agafya Mikhailovna was sent on to the home
farm for some reason or other, and minded the sheep. She got so fond of
sheep that all her days after she never would touch mutton.

After the sheep, she had an affection for dogs, and that is the only
period of her life that I remember her in.

There was nothing in the world she cared about but dogs. She lived with
them in horrible di