atred at Olga. "That's how
you have come by your fat mug, having a good time in Moscow, you lump of
flesh!" She swung the yoke and hit Olga such a blow on the shoulder that
the two sisters-in-law could only clasp their hands and say:

"Oh, holy Saints!"

Then Fyokla went down to the river to wash the clothes, swearing all the
time so loudly that she could be heard in the hut.

The day passed and was followed by the long autumn evening. They wound
silk in the hut; everyone did it except Fyokla; she had gone over the
river. They got the silk from a factory close by, and the whole family
working together earned next to nothing, twenty kopecks a week.

"Things were better in the old days under the gentry," said the old
father as he wound silk. "You worked and ate and slept, everything in
its turn. At dinner you had cabbage-soup and boiled grain, and at supper
the same again. Cucumbers and cabbage in plenty: you could eat to your
heart's content, as much as you wanted. And there was more strictness.
Everyone minded what he was about."

The hut was lighted by a single little lamp, which burned dimly and
smoked. When someone screened the lamp and a big shadow fell across the
window, the bright moonlight could be seen. Old Osip, speaking slowly,
told them how they used to live before the emancipation; how in those
very parts, where life was now so poor and so dreary, they used to
hunt with harriers, greyhounds, retrievers, and when they went out as
beaters the peasants were given vodka; how whole waggonloads of game
used to be sent to Moscow for the young masters; how the bad were beaten
with rods or sent away to the Tver estate, while the good were rewarded.
And Granny told them something, too. She remembered everything,
positively everything. She described her mistress, a kind, God-fearing
woman, whose husband was a profligate and a rake, and all of whose
daughters made unlucky marriages: one married a drunkard, another
married a workman, the other eloped secretly (Granny herself, at that
time a young girl, helped in the elopement), and they had all three as
well as their mother died early from grief. And remembering all this,
Granny positively began to shed tears.

All at once someone knocked at the door, and they all started.

"Uncle Osip, give me a night's lodging."

The little bald old man, General Zhukov's cook, the one whose cap had
been burnt, walked in. He sat down and listened, then he, too, began
telling st