“Oh, holy Saints!”

Then Fyokla went down to the river to wash the clothes, swearing all the time so loudly that she could be heard in the hut.

The day passed and was followed by the long autumn evening.  They wound silk in the hut; everyone did it except Fyokla; she had gone over the river.  They got the silk from a factory close by, and the whole family working together earned next to nothing, twenty kopecks a week.

“Things were better in the old days under the gentry,” said the old father as he wound silk.  “You worked and ate and slept, everything in its turn.  At dinner you had cabbage-soup and boiled grain, and at supper the same again.  Cucumbers and cabbage in plenty:  you could eat to your heart’s content, as much as you wanted.  And there was more strictness.  Everyone minded what he was about.”

The hut was lighted by a single little lamp, which burned dimly and smoked.  When someone screened the lamp and a big shadow fell across the window, the bright moonlight could be seen.  Old Osip, speaking slowly, told them how they used to live before the emancipation; how in those very parts, where life was now so poor and so dreary, they used to hunt with harriers, greyhounds, retrievers, and when they went out as beaters the peasants were given vodka; how whole waggonloads of game used to be sent to Moscow for the young masters; how the bad were beaten with rods or sent away to the Tver estate, while the good were rewarded.  And Granny told them something, too.  She remembered everything, positively everything.  She described her mistress, a kind, God-fearing woman, whose husband was a profligate and a rake, and all of whose daughters made unlucky marriages:  one married a drunkard, another married a workman, the other eloped secretly (Granny herself, at that time a young girl, helped in the elopement), and they had all three as well as their mother died early from grief.  And remembering all this, Granny positively began to shed tears.

All at once someone knocked at the door, and they all started.

“Uncle Osip, give me a night’s lodging.”

The little bald old man, General Zhukov’s cook, the one whose cap had been burnt, walked in.  He sat down and listened, then he, too, began telling stories of all sorts.  Nikolay, sitting on the stove with his legs hanging down, listened and asked questions about the dishes that were prepared in the old days for the gentry.  They talked of rissoles, cutlets, various soups and sauces, and the cook, who remembered everything very well, mentioned dishes that are no longer served.  There was one, for instance—­a dish made of bulls’ eyes, which was called “waking up in the morning.”

“And used you to do cutlets a’ la marechal?” asked Nikolay.

“No.”

Nikolay shook his head reproachfully and said: 

“Tut, tut!  You were not much of a cook!”

The little girls sitting and lying on the stove stared down without blinking; it seemed as though there were a great many of them, like cherubim in the clouds.  They liked the stories:  they were breathless; they shuddered and turned pale with alternate rapture and terror, and they listened breathlessly, afraid to stir, to Granny, whose stories were the most interesting of all.