at living with her. Varvara heard about
Lipa from the matchmakers, and she drove over to Torguevo.

Then a visit of inspection was arranged at the aunt's, with lunch and
wine all in due order, and Lipa wore a new pink dress made on purpose
for this occasion, and a crimson ribbon like a flame gleamed in her
hair. She was pale-faced, thin, and frail, with soft, delicate features
sunburnt from working in the open air; a shy, mournful smile always
hovered about her face, and there was a childlike look in her eyes,
trustful and curious.

She was young, quite a little girl, her bosom still scarcely
perceptible, but she could be married because she had reached the legal
age. She really was beautiful, and the only thing that might be thought
unattractive was her big masculine hands which hung idle now like two
big claws.

"There is no dowry--and we don't think much of that," said Tsybukin to
the aunt. "We took a wife from a poor family for our son Stepan, too,
and now we can't say too much for her. In house and in business alike
she has hands of gold."

Lipa stood in the doorway and looked as though she would say: "Do with
me as you will, I trust you," while her mother Praskovya the work-woman
hid herself in the kitchen numb with shyness. At one time in her youth
a merchant whose floors she was scrubbing stamped at her in a rage; she
went chill with terror and there always was a feeling of fear at the
bottom of her heart. When she was frightened her arms and legs trembled
and her cheeks twitched. Sitting in the kitchen she tried to hear what
the visitors were saying, and she kept crossing herself, pressing her
fingers to her forehead, and gazing at the ikons. Anisim, slightly
drunk, opened the door into the kitchen and said in a free-and-easy way:

"Why are you sitting in here, precious mamma? We are dull without you."

And Praskovya, overcome with timidity, pressing her hands to her lean,
wasted bosom, said:

"Oh, not at all.... It's very kind of you."

After the visit of inspection the wedding day was fixed. Then Anisim
walked about the rooms at home whistling, or suddenly thinking of
something, would fall to brooding and would look at the floor fixedly,
silently, as though he would probe to the depths of the earth. He
expressed neither pleasure that he was to be married, married so
soon, on Low Sunday, nor a desire to see his bride, but simply went on
whistling. And it was evident he was only getting married because