“Oh well, I am not a fright myself.  All of us Tsybukins are handsome, I may say.”

The village of Torguevo was near the town.  Half of it had lately been incorporated into the town, the other half remained a village.  In the first—­the town half—­there was a widow living in her own little house; she had a sister living with her who was quite poor and went out to work by the day, and this sister had a daughter called Lipa, a girl who went out to work, too.  People in Torguevo were already talking about Lipa’s good looks, but her terrible poverty put everyone off; people opined that some widower or elderly man would marry her regardless of her poverty, or would perhaps take her to himself without marriage, and that her mother would get enough to eat living with her.  Varvara heard about Lipa from the matchmakers, and she drove over to Torguevo.

Then a visit of inspection was arranged at the aunt’s, with lunch and wine all in due order, and Lipa wore a new pink dress made on purpose for this occasion, and a crimson ribbon like a flame gleamed in her hair.  She was pale-faced, thin, and frail, with soft, delicate features sunburnt from working in the open air; a shy, mournful smile always hovered about her face, and there was a childlike look in her eyes, trustful and curious.

She was young, quite a little girl, her bosom still scarcely perceptible, but she could be married because she had reached the legal age.  She really was beautiful, and the only thing that might be thought unattractive was her big masculine hands which hung idle now like two big claws.

“There is no dowry—­and we don’t think much of that,” said Tsybukin to the aunt.  “We took a wife from a poor family for our son Stepan, too, and now we can’t say too much for her.  In house and in business alike she has hands of gold.”

Lipa stood in the doorway and looked as though she would say:  “Do with me as you will, I trust you,” while her mother Praskovya the work-woman hid herself in the kitchen numb with shyness.  At one time in her youth a merchant whose floors she was scrubbing stamped at her in a rage; she went chill with terror and there always was a feeling of fear at the bottom of her heart.  When she was frightened her arms and legs trembled and her cheeks twitched.  Sitting in the kitchen she tried to hear what the visitors were saying, and she kept crossing herself, pressing her fingers to her forehead, and gazing at the ikons.  Anisim, slightly drunk, opened the door into the kitchen and said in a free-and-easy way: 

“Why are you sitting in here, precious mamma?  We are dull without you.”

And Praskovya, overcome with timidity, pressing her hands to her lean, wasted bosom, said: 

“Oh, not at all....  It’s very kind of you.”