obsequiously.  Besides these two old creatures and three pot-bellied children in long smocks, Anton’s great-grandchildren, there was also living in the manor-house a one-armed peasant, who was exempted from servitude; he muttered like a woodcock and was of no use for anything.  Not much more useful was the decrepit dog who had saluted Lavretsky’s return by its barking; he had been for ten years fastened up by a heavy chain, purchased at Glafira Petrovna’s command, and was scarcely able to move and drag the weight of it.  Having looked over the house, Lavretsky went into the garden and was very much pleased with it.  It was all overgrown with high grass, and burdock, and gooseberry and raspberry bushes, but there was plenty of shade, and many old lime-trees, which were remarkable for their immense size and the peculiar growth of their branches; they had been planted too close and at some time or other—­a hundred years before—­they had been lopped.  At the end of the garden was a small clear pool bordered with high reddish rushes.  The traces of human life very quickly! pass away; Glafira Petrovna’s estate had not had time to become quite wild, but already it seemed plunged in that quiet slumber in which everything reposes on earth where there is not the infection of man’s restlessness.  Fedor Ivanitch walked also through the village; the peasant-women stared at him from the doorways of their huts, their cheeks resting on their hands; the peasants saluted him from a distance, the children ran out, and the dogs barked indifferently.  At last he began to feel hungry; but he did not expect his servants and his cook till the evening; the waggons of provisions from Lavriky had not come yet, and he had to have recourse to Anton.  Anton arranged matters at once; he caught, killed, and plucked an old hen; Apraxya gave it a long rubbing and cleaning, and washed it like linen before putting it into the stew-pan; when, at last, it was cooked Anton laid the cloth and set the table, placing beside the knife and fork a three-legged salt-cellar of tarnished plate and a cut decanter with a round glass stopper and a narrow neck; then he announced to Lavretsky in a sing-song voice that the meal was ready, and took his stand behind his chair, with a napkin twisted round his right fights, and diffusing about him a peculiar strong ancient odour, like the scent of a cypress-tree.  Lavretsky tried the soup, and took out the hen; its skin was all covered with large blisters; a tough tendon ran up each leg; the meat had a flavour of wood and soda.  When he had finished dinner, Lavretsky said that he would drink a cup of tea, if—­“I will bring it this minute,” the old man interrupted.  And he kept his word.  A pinch of tea was hunted up, twisted in a screw of red paper; a small but very fiery and loudly-hissing samovar was found, and sugar too in small lumps, which looked as if they were thawing.  Lavretsky drank tea out of a large cup; he remembered this cup from childhood; there were playing-cards depicted