h."

The younger sister, Genya, was silent during the conversation about the
Zemstvo. She did not take part in serious conversations, for by the
family she was not considered grown-up, and they gave her her baby-name,
Missyuss, because as a child she used to call her English governess
that. All the time she examined me curiously and when I looked at the
photograph-album she explained: "This is my uncle.... That is my
godfather," and fingered the portraits, and at the same time touched me
with her shoulder in a childlike way, and I could see her small,
undeveloped bosom, her thin shoulders, her long, slim waist tightly
drawn in by a belt.

We played croquet and lawn-tennis, walked in the garden, had tea, and
then a large supper. After the huge pillared hall, I felt out of tune in
the small cosy house, where there were no oleographs on the walls and
the servants were treated considerately, and everything seemed to me
young and pure, through the presence of Lyda and Missyuss, and
everything was decent and orderly. At supper Lyda again talked to
Bielokurov about the Zemstvo, about Balaguin, about school libraries.
She was a lively, sincere, serious girl, and it was interesting to
listen to her, though she spoke at length and in a loud voice--perhaps
because she was used to holding forth at school. On the other hand,
Piotr Petrovich, who from his university days had retained the habit of
reducing any conversation to a discussion, spoke tediously, slowly, and
deliberately, with an obvious desire to be taken for a clever and
progressive man. He gesticulated and upset the sauce with his sleeve and
it made a large pool on the table-cloth, though nobody but myself seemed
to notice it.

When we returned home the night was dark and still.

"I call it good breeding," said Bielokurov, with a sigh, "not so much
not to upset the sauce on the table, as not to notice it when some one
else has done it. Yes. An admirable intellectual family. I'm rather out
of touch with nice people. Ah! terribly. And all through business,
business, business!"

He went on to say what hard work being a good farmer meant. And I
thought: What a stupid, lazy lout! When we talked seriously he would
drag it out with his awful drawl--er, er, er--and he works just as he
talks--slowly, always behindhand, never up to time; and as for his being
businesslike, I don't believe it, for he often keeps letters given him
to post for weeks in his pocket.

"The worst o