“Are you from the town?” she asked timidly, not looking at her visitor.

“Yes, I live in the town.”

“Perhaps you are something in the learned way, sir; be so kind as to advise us.  We ought to send in a petition.”

“To whom?” asked the visitor.

“We have two sons, kind gentleman, and they ought to have been sent to school long ago, but we never see anyone and have no one to advise us.  And I know nothing.  For if they are not taught they will have to serve in the army as common Cossacks.  It’s not right, sir!  They can’t read and write, they are worse than peasants, and Ivan Abramitch himself can’t stand them and won’t let them indoors.  But they are not to blame.  The younger one, at any rate, ought to be sent to school, it is such a pity!” she said slowly, and there was a quiver in her voice; and it seemed incredible that a woman so small and so youthful could have grown-up children.  “Oh, it’s such a pity!”

“You don’t know anything about it, mother, and it is not your affair,” said Zhmuhin, appearing in the doorway.  “Don’t pester our guest with your wild talk.  Go away, mother!”

Lyubov Osipovna went out, and in the entry repeated once more in a thin little voice:  “Oh, it’s such a pity!”

A bed was made up for the visitor on the sofa in the parlour, and that it might not be dark for him they lighted the lamp before the ikon.  Zhmuhin went to bed in his own room.  And as he lay there he thought of his soul, of his age, of his recent stroke which had so frightened him and made him think of death.  He was fond of philosophizing when he was in quietness by himself, and then he fancied that he was a very earnest, deep thinker, and that nothing in this world interested him but serious questions.  And now he kept thinking and he longed to pitch upon some one significant thought unlike others, which would be a guide to him in life, and he wanted to think out principles of some sort for himself so as to make his life as deep and earnest as he imagined that he felt himself to be.  It would be a good thing for an old man like him to abstain altogether from meat, from superfluities of all sorts.  The time when men give up killing each other and animals would come sooner or later, it could not but be so, and he imagined that time to himself and clearly pictured himself living in peace with all the animals, and suddenly he thought again of the pigs, and everything was in a tangle in his brain.

“It’s a queer business, Lord have mercy upon us,” he muttered, sighing heavily.  “Are you asleep?” he asked.

“No.”

Zhmuhin got out of bed and stopped in the doorway with nothing but his shirt on, displaying to his guest his sinewy legs, that looked as dry as sticks.