' teeth
like a peasant, and was always laughing or shouting; and whatever she
did or said the old man was simply delighted and muttered:

"Well done, daughter-in-law! You are a smart wench!"

He was a widower, but a year after his son's marriage he could not
resist getting married himself. A girl was found for him, living twenty
miles from Ukleevo, called Varvara Nikolaevna, no longer quite young,
but good-looking, comely, and belonging to a decent family. As soon as
she was installed into the upper-storey room everything in the house
seemed to brighten up as though new glass had been put into all the
windows. The lamps gleamed before the ikons, the tables were covered
with snow-white cloths, flowers with red buds made their appearance in
the windows and in the front garden, and at dinner, instead of eating
from a single bowl, each person had a separate plate set for him.
Varvara Nikolaevna had a pleasant, friendly smile, and it seemed as
though the whole house were smiling, too. Beggars and pilgrims, male and
female, began to come into the yard, a thing which had never happened
in the past; the plaintive sing-song voices of the Ukleevo peasant
women and the apologetic coughs of weak, seedy-looking men, who had been
dismissed from the factory for drunkenness were heard under the windows.
Varvara helped them with money, with bread, with old clothes, and
afterwards, when she felt more at home, began taking things out of the
shop. One day the deaf man saw her take four ounces of tea and that
disturbed him.

"Here, mother's taken four ounces of tea," he informed his father
afterwards; "where is that to be entered?"

The old man made no reply but stood still and thought a moment, moving
his eyebrows, and then went upstairs to his wife.

"Varvarushka, if you want anything out of the shop," he said
affectionately, "take it, my dea r. Take it and welcome; don't
hesitate."

And the next day the deaf man, running across the yard, called to her:

"If there is anything you want, mother, take it."

There was something new, something gay and light-hearted in her giving
of alms, just as there was in the lamps before the ikons and in the red
flowers. When at Carnival or at the church festival, which lasted for
three days, they sold the peasants tainted salt meat, smelling so strong
it was hard to stand near the tub of it, and took scythes, caps, and
their wives' kerchiefs in pledge from the drunken men; when the factory
hands