“It is our series,” said Ivan Dmitritch, after a long silence.  “So there is a probability that we have won.  It’s only a probability, but there it is!”

“Well, now look!”

“Wait a little.  We have plenty of time to be disappointed.  It’s on the second line from the top, so the prize is seventy-five thousand.  That’s not money, but power, capital!  And in a minute I shall look at the list, and there—­26!  Eh?  I say, what if we really have won?”

The husband and wife began laughing and staring at one another in silence.  The possibility of winning bewildered them; they could not have said, could not have dreamed, what they both needed that seventy-five thousand for, what they would buy, where they would go.  They thought only of the figures 9,499 and 75,000 and pictured them in their imagination, while somehow they could not think of the happiness itself which was so possible.

Ivan Dmitritch, holding the paper in his hand, walked several times from corner to corner, and only when he had recovered from the first impression began dreaming a little.

“And if we have won,” he said—­“why, it will be a new life, it will be a transformation!  The ticket is yours, but if it were mine I should, first of all, of course, spend twenty-five thousand on real property in the shape of an estate; ten thousand on immediate expenses, new furnishing... travelling... paying debts, and so on....  The other forty thousand I would put in the bank and get interest on it.”

“Yes, an estate, that would be nice,” said his wife, sitting down and dropping her hands in her lap.

“Somewhere in the Tula or Oryol provinces....  In the first place we shouldn’t need a summer villa, and besides, it would always bring in an income.”

And pictures came crowding on his imagination, each more gracious and poetical than the last.  And in all these pictures he saw himself well-fed, serene, healthy, felt warm, even hot!  Here, after eating a summer soup, cold as ice, he lay on his back on the burning sand close to a stream or in the garden under a lime-tree....  It is hot....  His little boy and girl are crawling about near him, digging in the sand or catching ladybirds in the grass.  He dozes sweetly, thinking of nothing, and feeling all over that he need not go to the office today, tomorrow, or the day after.  Or, tired of lying still, he goes to the hayfield, or to the forest for mushrooms, or watches the peasants catching fish with a net.  When the sun sets he takes a towel and soap and saunters to the bathing-shed, where he undresses at his leisure, slowly rubs his bare chest with his hands, and goes into the water.  And in the water, near the opaque soapy circles, little fish flit to and fro and green water-weeds nod their heads.  After bathing there is tea with cream and milk rolls....  In the evening a walk or vint with the neighbours.

“Yes, it would be nice to buy an estate,” said his wife, also dreaming, and from her face it was evident that she was enchanted by her thoughts.