“It’s nice here,” he said.

“Of course it’s nice, you ought to stay here till the autumn.”

“Yes, I expect it will come to that.  I dare say I shall stay with you till September.”

He laughed for no reason, and sat down beside her.

“I’m sitting gazing at mother,” said Nadya.  “She looks so young from here!  My mother has her weaknesses, of course,” she added, after a pause, “but still she is an exceptional woman.”

“Yes, she is very nice . . .”  Sasha agreed.  “Your mother, in her own way of course, is a very good and sweet woman, but . . . how shall I say?  I went early this morning into your kitchen and there I found four servants sleeping on the floor, no bedsteads, and rags for bedding, stench, bugs, beetles . . . it is just as it was twenty years ago, no change at all.  Well, Granny, God bless her, what else can you expect of Granny?  But your mother speaks French, you know, and acts in private theatricals.  One would think she might understand.”

As Sasha talked, he used to stretch out two long wasted fingers before the listener’s face.

“It all seems somehow strange to me here, now I am out of the habit of it,” he went on.  “There is no making it out.  Nobody ever does anything.  Your mother spends the whole day walking about like a duchess, Granny does nothing either, nor you either.  And your Andrey Andreitch never does anything either.”

Nadya had heard this the year before and, she fancied, the year before that too, and she knew that Sasha could not make any other criticism, and in old days this had amused her, but now for some reason she felt annoyed.

“That’s all stale, and I have been sick of it for ages,” she said and got up.  “You should think of something a little newer.”

He laughed and got up too, and they went together toward the house.  She, tall, handsome, and well-made, beside him looked very healthy and smartly dressed; she was conscious of this and felt sorry for him and for some reason awkward.

“And you say a great deal you should not,” she said.  “You’ve just been talking about my Andrey, but you see you don’t know him.”

“My Andrey. . . .  Bother him, your Andrey.  I am sorry for your youth.”

They were already sitting down to supper as the young people went into the dining-room.  The grandmother, or Granny as she was called in the household, a very stout, plain old lady with bushy eyebrows and a little moustache, was talking loudly, and from her voice and manner of speaking it could be seen that she was the person of most importance in the house.  She owned rows of shops in the market, and the old-fashioned house with columns and the garden, yet she prayed every morning that God might save her from ruin and shed tears as she did so.  Her daughter-in-law, Nadya’s mother, Nina Ivanovna, a fair-haired woman tightly laced in, with a pince-nez, and diamonds on every finger, Father Andrey, a lean, toothless old man whose face always looked as though he were just going to say something amusing, and his son, Andrey Andreitch, a stout and handsome young man with curly hair looking like an artist or an actor, were all talking of hypnotism.