heard almost uninterruptedly. They sang,
had lunch, and went away.

About twenty men from the factory came to offer their Christmas
greetings. They were only the foremen, mechanicians, and their
assistants, the pattern-makers, the accountant, and so on--all
of good appearance, in new black coats. They were all first-rate
men, as it were picked men; each one knew his value--that is,
knew that if he lost his berth today, people would be glad to take
him on at another factory. Evidently they liked Auntie, as they
behaved freely in her presence and even smoked, and when they had
all trooped in to have something to eat, the accountant put his arm
round her immense waist. They were free-and-easy, perhaps, partly
also because Varvarushka, who under the old masters had wielded
great power and had kept watch over the morals of the clerks, had
now no authority whatever in the house; and perhaps because many
of them still remembered the time when Auntie Tatyana Ivanovna,
whose brothers kept a strict hand over her, had been dressed like
a simple peasant woman like Agafya, and when Anna Akimovna used to
run about the yard near the factory buildings and every one used
to call her Anyutya.

The foremen ate, talked, and kept looking with amazement at Anna
Akimovna, how she had grown up and how handsome she had become! But
this elegant girl, educated by governesses and teachers, was a
stranger to them; they could not understand her, and they instinctively
kept closer to "Auntie," who called them by their names, continually
pressed them to eat and drink, and, clinking glasses with them, had
already drunk two wineglasses of rowanberry wine with them. Anna
Akimovna was always afraid of their thinking her proud, an upstart,
or a crow in peacock's feathers; and now while the foremen were
crowding round the food, she did not leave the dining-room, but
took part in the conversation. She asked Pimenov, her acquaintance
of the previous day:

"Why have you so many clocks in your room?"

"I mend clocks," he answered. "I take the work up between times,
on holidays, or when I can't sleep."

"So if my watch goes wrong I can bring it to you to be repaired?"
Anna Akimovna asked, laughing.

"To be sure, I will do it with pleasure," said Pimenov, and there
was an expression of tender devotion in his face, when, not herself
knowing why, she unfastened her magnificent watch from its chain
and handed it to him; he looked at it in silence and gave