stupefied with bad vodka lay rolling in the mud, and sin seemed to
hover thick like a fog in the air, then it was a relief to think that
up there in the house there was a gentle, neatly dressed woman who
had nothing to do with salt meat or vodka; her charity had in those
burdensome, murky days the effect of a safety valve in a machine.

The days in Tsybukin's house were spent in business cares. Before the
sun had risen in the morning Aksinya was panting and puffing as she
washed in the outer room, and the samovar was boiling in the kitchen
with a hum that boded no good. Old Grigory Petrovitch, dressed in a long
black coat, cotton breeches and shiny top boots, looking a dapper little
figure, walked about the rooms, tapping with his little heels like the
father-in-law in a well-known song. The shop was opened. When it was
daylight a racing droshky was brought up to the front door and the old
man got jauntily on to it, pulling his big cap down to his ears; and,
looking at him, no one would have said he was fifty-six. His wife and
daughter-in-law saw him off, and at such times when he had on a good,
clean coat, and had in the droshky a huge black horse that had cost
three hundred roubles, the old man did not like the peasants to come up
to him with their complaints and petitions; he hated the peasants and
disdained them, and if he saw some peasants waiting at the gate, he
would shout angrily:

"Why are you standing there? Go further off."

Or if it were a beggar, he would say:

"God will provide!"

He used to drive off on business; his wife, in a dark dress and a black
apron, tidied the rooms or helped in the kitchen. Aksinya attended to
the shop, and from the yard could be heard the clink of bottles and of
money, her laughter and loud talk, and the anger of customers whom she
had offended; and at the same time it could be seen that the secret sale
of vodka was already going on in the shop. The deaf man sat in the
shop, too, or walked about the street bare-headed, with his hands in
his pockets looking absent-mindedly now at the huts, now at the sky
overhead. Six times a day they had tea; four times a day they sat down
to meals; and in the evening they counted over their takings, put them
down, went to bed, and slept soundly.

All the three cotton factories in Ukleevo and the houses of the
factory owners--Hrymin Seniors, Hrymin Juniors, and Kostukov--were on
a telephone. The telephone was laid on in the local court, t