mill, she thought, "Grandfather will eat
that." For the most part he was silent, absorbed in eating or in
patience; but it sometimes happened at dinner that at the sight of
Vera he would be touched and say tenderly:

"My only grandchild! Verotchka!"

And tears would glisten in his eyes. Or his face would turn suddenly
crimson, his neck would swell, he would look with fury at the
servants, and ask, tapping with his stick:

"Why haven't you brought the horse-radish?"

In winter he led a perfectly inactive existence; in summer he
sometimes drove out into the fields to look at the oats and the
hay; and when he came back he would flourish his stick and declare
that everything was neglected now that he was not there to look
after it.

"Your grandfather is out of humour," Auntie Dasha would whisper.
"But it's nothing now to what it used to be in the old days:
'Twenty-five strokes! The birch!'"

Her aunt complained that every one had grown lazy, that no one did
anything, and that the estate yielded no profit. Indeed, there was
no systematic farming; they ploughed and sowed a little simply from
habit, and in reality did nothing and lived in idleness. Meanwhile
there was a running to and fro, reckoning and worrying all day long;
the bustle in the house began at five o'clock in the morning; there
were continual sounds of "Bring it," "Fetch it," "Make haste," and
by the evening the servants were utterly exhausted. Auntie Dasha
changed her cooks and her housemaids every week; sometimes she
discharged them for immorality; sometimes they went of their own
accord, complaining that they were worked to death. None of the
village people would come to the house as servants; Auntie Dasha
had to hire them from a distance. There was only one girl from the
village living in the house, Alyona, and she stayed because her
whole family--old people and children--were living upon her
wages. This Alyona, a pale, rather stupid little thing, spent the
whole day turning out the rooms, waiting at table, heating the
stoves, sewing, washing; but it always seemed as though she were
only pottering about, treading heavily with her boots, and were
nothing but a hindrance in the house. In her terror that she might
be dismissed and sent home, she often dropped and broke the crockery,
and they stopped the value of it out of her wages, and then her
mother and grandmother would come and bow down at Auntie Dasha's
feet.

Once a week or sometimes oftener v