replaced the sober old servants of former days.  Two setter dogs dashed wildly about and gambolled over the sofas, where the fat Roska had at one time waddled in solemn dignity.  The stables were filled with slender racers, spirited carriage horses, fiery out-riders with plaited manes, and riding horses from the Don.  The breakfast, dinner, and supper-hours were all in confusion and disorder; in the words of the neighbours, “unheard-of arrangements” were made.

On the evening of which we are speaking, the inhabitants of the Kalitins’ house (the eldest of them, Lenotchka’s betrothed, was only twenty-four) were engaged in a game, which, though not of a very complicated nature, was, to judge from their merry laughter, exceedingly entertaining to them; they were running about the rooms, chasing one another; the dogs, too, were running and barking, and the canaries, hanging in cages above the windows, were straining their throats in rivalry and adding to the general uproar by the shrill trilling of their piercing notes.  At the very height of this deafening merry-making a mud-bespattered carriage stopped at the gate, and a man of five-and forty, in a travelling dress, stepped out of it and stood still in amazement.  He stood a little time without stirring, watching the house with attentive eyes; then went through the little gate in the courtyard, and slowly mounted the steps.  In the hall he met no one; but the door of a room was suddenly! flung open, and out of it rushed Shurotchka, flushed and hot, and instantly, with a ringing shout, all the young party in pursuit of her.  They stopped short at once and were quiet at the sight of a stranger; but their clear eyes fixed on him wore the same friendly expression, and their fresh faces were still smiling as Marya Dmitreivna’s son went up to the visitor and asked him cordially what he could do for him.

“I am Lavretsky,” replied the visitor.

He was answered by a shout in chorus—­and not because these young people were greatly delighted at the arrival of a distant, almost forgotten relation, but simply because they were ready to be delighted and make noise at every opportunity.  They surrounded Lavretsky at once; Lenotchka, as an old acquaintance, was the first to mention her own name, and assured him that in a little while she would have certainly recognised him.  She presented him to the rest of the party, calling each, even her betrothed, by their pet names.  They all trooped through the dining-room into the drawing-room.  The walls of both rooms had been repapered; but the furniture remained the same.  Lavretsky recognised the piano; even the embroidery-frame in the window was just the same, and in the same position, and it seemed with the same unfinished embroidery on it, as eight years ago.  They made him sit down in a comfortable arm-chair; all sat down politely in a circle round him.  Questions, exclamations, and anecdotes followed.

“It’s a long time since we have seen you, observed Lenotchka simply, “and Varvara Pavlovna we have seen nothing of either.”