Tea, biscuits, butter, and jam were brought in, followed by raspberries and cream.  At seven o’clock, we had supper, consisting of six courses, and while we were at supper I heard a loud yawn from the next room.  I looked with surprise towards the door:  it was a yawn that could only come from a man.

“That’s my husband’s brother, Yegor Semyonitch,” the little lady explained, noticing my surprise.  “He’s been living with us for the last year.  Please excuse him; he cannot come in to see you.  He is such an unsociable person, he is shy with strangers.  He is going into a monastery.  He was unfairly treated in the service, and the disappointment has preyed on his mind.”

After supper the little lady showed the vestment which Yegor Semyonitch was embroidering with his own hands as an offering for the Church.  Manetchka threw off her shyness for a moment and showed me the tobacco-pouch she was embroidering for her father.  When I pretended to be greatly struck by her work, she flushed crimson and whispered something in her mother’s ear.  The latter beamed all over, and invited me to go with her to the store-room.  There I was shown five large trunks, and a number of smaller trunks and boxes.

“This is her trousseau,” her mother whispered; “we made it all ourselves.”

After looking at these forbidding trunks I took leave of my hospitable hostesses.  They made me promise to come and see them again some day.

It happened that I was able to keep this promise.  Seven years after my first visit, I was sent down to the little town to give expert evidence in a case that was being tried there.

As I entered the little house I heard the same “Ach!” echo through it.  They recognised me at once. . . .  Well they might!  My first visit had been an event in their lives, and when events are few they are long remembered.

I walked into the drawing-room:  the mother, who had grown stouter and was already getting grey, was creeping about on the floor, cutting out some blue material.  The daughter was sitting on the sofa, embroidering.

There was the same smell of moth powder; there were the same patterns, the same portrait with the broken glass.  But yet there was a change.  Beside the portrait of the bishop hung a portrait of the Colonel, and the ladies were in mourning.  The Colonel’s death had occurred a week after his promotion to be a general.

Reminiscences began. . . .  The widow shed tears.

“We have had a terrible loss,” she said.  “My husband, you know, is dead.  We are alone in the world now, and have no one but ourselves to look to.  Yegor Semyonitch is alive, but I have no good news to tell of him.  They would not have him in the monastery on account of—­of intoxicating beverages.  And now in his disappointment he drinks more than ever.  I am thinking of going to the Marshal of Nobility to lodge a complaint.  Would you believe it, he has more than once broken open the trunks and . . . taken Manetchka’s trousseau and given it to beggars.  He has taken everything out of two of the trunks!  If he goes on like this, my Manetchka will be left without a trousseau at all.”