e into partnership with the Hrymin Juniors, and their
factory is now called Hrymin Juniors and Co. They have opened a tavern
near the station, and now the expensive concertina is played not at the
factory but at the tavern, and the head of the post office often
goes there, and he, too, is engaged in some sort of traffic, and the
stationmaster, too. Hrymin Juniors have presented the deaf man Stepan
with a gold watch, and he is constantly taking it out of his pocket and
putting it to his ear.

People say of Aksinya that she has become a person of power; and it is
true that when she drives in the morning to her brickyard, handsome
and happy, with the naive smile on her face, and afterwards when she
is giving orders there, one is aware of great power in her. Everyone is
afraid of her in the house and in the village and in the brickyard. When
she goes to the post the head of the postal department jumps up and says
to her:

"I humbly beg you to be seated, Aksinya Abramovna!"

A certain landowner, middle-aged but foppish, in a tunic of fine cloth
and patent leather high boots, sold her a horse, and was so carried away
by talking to her that he knocked down the price to meet her wishes. He
held her hand a long time and, looking into her merry, sly, naive eyes,
said:

"For a woman like you, Aksinya Abramovna, I should be ready to do
anything you please. Only say when we can meet where no one will
interfere with us?"

"Why, when you please."

And since then the elderly fop drives up to the shop almost every day
to drink beer. And the beer is horrid, bitter as wormwood. The landowner
shakes his head, but he drinks it.

Old Tsybukin does not have anything to do with the business now at all.
He does not keep any money because he cannot distinguish between the
good and the false, but he is silent, he says nothing of this weakness.
He has become forgetful, and if they don't give him food he does not ask
for it. They have grown used to having dinner without him, and Varvara
often says:

"He went to bed again yesterday without any supper."

And she says it unconcernedly because she is used to it. For some
reason, summer and winter alike, he wears a fur coat, and only in very
hot weather he does not go out but sits at home. As a rule putting on
his fur coat, wrapping it round him and turning up his collar, he walks
about the village, along the road to the station, or sits from morning
till night on the seat near the church ga