“My goo-oodness!  What’s that?” he asked.

Tatyana Ivanovna, the wife of our bailiff, Fyodor Petrovna, was coming towards us.  She was carrying a starched white petticoat and a long ironing-board.  As she passed us she looked shyly at the visitor through her eyelashes and flushed crimson.

“Wonders will never cease...” my uncle filtered through his teeth, looking after her with friendly interest.  “You have a fresh surprise at every step, sister... upon my soul!”

“She’s a beauty...” said mother.  “They chose her as a bride for Fyodor, though she lived over seventy miles from here....”

Not every one would have called Tatyana a beauty.  She was a plump little woman of twenty, with black eyebrows and a graceful figure, always rosy and attractive-looking, but in her face and in her whole person there was not one striking feature, not one bold line to catch the eye, as though nature had lacked inspiration and confidence when creating her.  Tatyana Ivanovna was shy, bashful, and modest in her behaviour; she moved softly and smoothly, said little, seldom laughed, and her whole life was as regular as her face and as flat as her smooth, tidy hair.  My uncle screwed up his eyes looking after her, and smiled.  Mother looked intently at his smiling face and grew serious.

“And so, brother, you’ve never married!” she sighed.

“No; I’ve not married.”

“Why not?” asked mother softly.

“How can I tell you?  It has happened so.  In my youth I was too hard at work, I had no time to live, and when I longed to live—­I looked round—­and there I had fifty years on my back already.  I was too late!  However, talking about it... is depressing.”

My mother and my uncle both sighed at once and walked on, and I left them and flew off to find my tutor, that I might share my impressions with him.  Pobyedimsky was standing in the middle of the yard, looking majestically at the heavens.

“One can see he is a man of culture!” he said, twisting his head round.  “I hope we shall get on together.”

An hour later mother came to us.

“I am in trouble, my dears!” she began, sighing.  “You see brother has brought a valet with him, and the valet, God bless him, is not one you can put in the kitchen or in the hall; we must give him a room apart.  I can’t think what I am to do!  I tell you what, children, couldn’t you move out somewhere—­to Fyodor’s lodge, for instance—­and give your room to the valet?  What do you say?”

We gave our ready consent, for living in the lodge was a great deal more free than in the house, under mother’s eye.

“It’s a nuisance, and that’s a fact!” said mother.  “Brother says he won’t have dinner in the middle of the day, but between six and seven, as they do in Petersburg.  I am simply distracted with worry!  By seven o’clock the dinner will be done to rags in the oven.  Really, men don’t understand anything about housekeeping, though they have so much intellect.  Oh, dear! we shall have to cook two dinners every day!  You will have dinner at midday as before, children, while your poor old mother has to wait till seven, for the sake of her brother.”