the table, pretending to look for mushrooms
in the grass, or reading the labels on the boxes--these were those
for whom there were not glasses enough. "Have you had tea?" Olga
Mihalovna kept asking, and the guest so addressed begged her not
to trouble, and said, "I will wait," though it would have suited
her better for the visitors not to wait but to make haste.

Some, absorbed in conversation, drank their tea slowly, keeping
their glasses for half an hour; others, especially some who had
drunk a good deal at dinner, would not leave the table, and kept
on drinking glass after glass, so that Olga Mihalovna scarcely had
time to fill them. One jocular young man sipped his tea through a
lump of sugar, and kept saying, "Sinful man that I am, I love to
indulge myself with the Chinese herb." He kept asking with a heavy
sigh: "Another tiny dish of tea more, if you please." He drank a
great deal, nibbled his sugar, and thought it all very amusing and
original, and imagined that he was doing a clever imitation of a
Russian merchant. None of them understood that these trifles were
agonizing to their hostess, and, indeed, it was hard to understand
it, as Olga Mihalovna went on all the time smiling affably and
talking nonsense.

But she felt ill. . . . She was irritated by the crowd of people,
the laughter, the questions, the jocular young man, the footmen
harassed and run off their legs, the children who hung round the
table; she was irritated at Vata's being like Nata, at Kolya's being
like Mitya, so that one could not tell which of them had had tea
and which of them had not. She felt that her smile of forced
affability was passing into an expression of anger, and she felt
every minute as though she would burst into tears.

"Rain, my friends," cried some one.

Every one looked at the sky.

"Yes, it really is rain . . ." Pyotr Dmitritch assented, and wiped
his cheek.

Only a few drops were falling from the sky--the real rain had not
begun yet; but the company abandoned their tea and made haste to
get off. At first they all wanted to drive home in the carriages,
but changed their minds and made for the boats. On the pretext that
she had to hasten home to give directions about the supper, Olga
Mihalovna asked to be excused for leaving the others, and went home
in the carriage.

When she got into the carriage, she first of all let her face rest
from smiling. With an angry face she drove through the village, and
with an ang