I used to walk through the garden and the meadow to our mill.  It was let to a peasant of Kurilovka called Stepan, a handsome, dark fellow with a thick black beard, who looked very strong.  He did not like the miller’s work, and looked upon it as dreary and unprofitable, and only lived at the mill in order not to live at home.  He was a leather-worker, and was always surrounded by a pleasant smell of tar and leather.  He was not fond of talking, he was listless and sluggish, and was always sitting in the doorway or on the river bank, humming “oo-loo-loo.”  His wife and mother-in-law, both white-faced, languid, and meek, used sometimes to come from Kurilovka to see him; they made low bows to him and addressed him formally, “Stepan Petrovitch,” while he went on sitting on the river bank, softly humming “oo-loo-loo,” without responding by word or movement to their bows.  One hour and then a second would pass in silence.  His mother-in-law and wife, after whispering together, would get up and gaze at him for some time, expecting him to look round; then they would make a low bow, and in sugary, chanting voices, say: 

“Good-bye, Stepan Petrovitch!”

And they would go away.  After that Stepan, picking up the parcel they had left, containing cracknels or a shirt, would heave a sigh and say, winking in their direction: 

“The female sex!”

The mill with two sets of millstones worked day and night.  I used to help Stepan; I liked the work, and when he went off I was glad to stay and take his place.

XI

After bright warm weather came a spell of wet; all May it rained and was cold.  The sound of the millwheels and of the rain disposed one to indolence and slumber.  The floor trembled, there was a smell of flour, and that, too, induced drowsiness.  My wife in a short fur-lined jacket, and in men’s high golosh boots, would make her appearance twice a day, and she always said the same thing: 

“And this is called summer!  Worse than it was in October!”

We used to have tea and make the porridge together, or we would sit for hours at a stretch without speaking, waiting for the rain to stop.  Once, when Stepan had gone off to the fair, Masha stayed all night at the mill.  When we got up we could not tell what time it was, as the rainclouds covered the whole sky; but sleepy cocks were crowing at Dubetchnya, and landrails were calling in the meadows; it was still very, very early. . . .  My wife and I went down to the millpond and drew out the net which Stepan had thrown in over night in our presence.  A big pike was struggling in it, and a cray-fish was twisting about, clawing upwards with its pincers.

“Let them go,” said Masha.  “Let them be happy too.”

Because we got up so early and afterwards did nothing, that day seemed very long, the longest day in my life.  Towards evening Stepan came back and I went home.