but she had beautiful dark eyes, a pale, very delicate
complexion, and a touching expression of goodness and melancholy,
and when she talked she seemed charming and even beautiful. We both,
she and I, took after our mother, were broad shouldered, strongly
built, and capable of endurance, but her pallor was a sign of
ill-health; she often had a cough, and I sometimes caught in her
face that look one sees in people who are seriously ill, but for
some reason conceal the fact. There was something naive and childish
in her gaiety now, as though the joy that had been suppressed and
smothered in our childhood by harsh education had now suddenly
awakened in her soul and found a free outlet.

But when evening came on and the horses were brought round, my
sister sank into silence and looked thin and shrunken, and she got
into the brake as though she were going to the scaffold.

When they had all gone, and the sound had died away . . . I remembered
that Anyuta Blagovo had not said a word to me all day.

"She is a wonderful girl!" I thought. "Wonderful girl!"

St. Peter's fast came, and we had nothing but Lenten dishes every
day. I was weighed down by physical depression due to idleness and
my unsettled position, and dissatisfied with myself. Listless and
hungry, I lounged about the garden and only waited for a suitable
mood to go away.

Towards evening one day, when Radish was sitting in the lodge,
Dolzhikov, very sunburnt and grey with dust, walked in unexpectedly.
He had been spending three days on his land, and had come now to
Dubetchnya by the steamer, and walked to us from the station. While
waiting for the carriage, which was to come for him from the town,
he walked round the grounds with his bailiff, giving orders in a
loud voice, then sat for a whole hour in our lodge, writing letters.
While he was there telegrams came for him, and he himself tapped
off the answers. We three stood in silence at attention.

"What a muddle!" he said, glancing contemptuously at a record book.
"In a fortnight I am transferring the office to the station, and I
don't know what I am to do with you, my friends."

"I do my best, your honour," said Tcheprakov.

"To be sure, I see how you do your best. The only thing you can do
is to take your salary," the engineer went on, looking at me; "you
keep relying on patronage to _faire le carriere_ as quickly and as
easily as possible. Well, I don't care for patronage. No one took
any trouble on m