he swore, and kept his oath, that, until all
outstanding debts were paid, he would never wear any clothes than his
father's greatcoat and a corduroy jacket which he had made for himself,
nor yet ride in aught but a country waggon, drawn by peasants' horses.
This stoical mode of life he sought to apply also to his family, so far
as the sympathetic respect which he conceived to be his mother's due
would allow of; so that, although, in the drawing-room, he would show
her only stuttering servility, and fulfil all her wishes, and blame any
one who did not do precisely as she bid them, in his study or his
office he would overhaul the cook if she had served up so much as a
duck without his orders, or any one responsible for sending a serf (even
though at Madame's own bidding) to inquire after a neighbour's health
or for despatching the peasant girls into the wood to gather wild
raspberries instead of setting them to weed the kitchen-garden.

Within four years every debt had been repaid, and Peter had gone to
Moscow and returned thence in a new jacket and tarantass. [A two-wheeled
carriage.] Yet, despite this flourishing position of affairs, he still
preserved the stoical tendencies in which, to tell the truth, he took
a certain vague pride before his family and strangers, since he would
frequently say with a stutter: "Any one who REALLY wishes to see me
will be glad to see me even in my dressing-gown, and to eat nothing but
shtchi [Cabbage-soup.] and kasha [Buckwheat gruel.] at my table." "That
is what I eat myself," he would add. In his every word and movement
spoke pride based upon a consciousness of having sacrificed himself for
his mother and redeemed the property, as well as contempt for any one
who had not done something of the same kind.

The mother and daughter were altogether different characters from Peter,
as well as altogether different from one another. The former was one of
the most agreeable, uniformly good-tempered, and cheerful women whom one
could possibly meet. Anything attractive and genuinely happy delighted
her. Even the faculty of being pleased with the sight of young people
enjoying themselves (it is only in the best-natured of elderly folk that
one meets with that TRAIT) she possessed to the full. On the other
hand, her daughter was of a grave turn of mind. Rather, she was of that
peculiarly careless, absent-minded, gratuitously distant bearing which
commonly distinguishes unmarried beauties. Whenever