llows with chubby faces
and tousled hair that wanted cutting, moved their chairs impatiently,
while their elders sat without stirring, and apparently did not care
whether they ate their dinner or waited....

As though trying their patience, Shiryaev deliberately dried his hands,
deliberately said his prayer, and sat down to the table without hurrying
himself. Cabbage-soup was served immediately. The sound of carpenters'
axes (Shiryaev was having a new barn built) and the laughter of Fomka,
their labourer, teasing the turkey, floated in from the courtyard.

Big, sparse drops of rain pattered on the window.

Pyotr, a round-shouldered student in spectacles, kept exchanging glances
with his mother as he ate his dinner. Several times he laid down his
spoon and cleared his throat, meaning to begin to speak, but after an
intent look at his father he fell to eating again. At last, when the
porridge had been served, he cleared his throat resolutely and said:

"I ought to go tonight by the evening train. I out to have gone before;
I have missed a fortnight as it is. The lectures begin on the first of
September."

"Well, go," Shiryaev assented; "why are you lingering on here? Pack up
and go, and good luck to you."

A minute passed in silence.

"He must have money for the journey, Yevgraf Ivanovitch," the mother
observed in a low voice.

"Money? To be sure, you can't go without money. Take it at once, since
you need it. You could have had it long ago!"

The student heaved a faint sigh and looked with relief at his mother.
Deliberately Shiryaev took a pocket-book out of his coat-pocket and put
on his spectacles.

"How much do you want?" he asked.

"The fare to Moscow is eleven roubles forty-two kopecks...."

"Ah, money, money!" sighed the father. (He always sighed when he saw
money, even when he was receiving it.) "Here are twelve roubles for
you. You will have change out of that which will be of use to you on the
journey."

"Thank you."

After waiting a little, the student said:

"I did not get lessons quite at first last year. I don't know how it
will be this year; most likely it will take me a little time to find
work. I ought to ask you for fifteen roubles for my lodging and dinner."

Shiryaev thought a little and heaved a sigh.

"You will have to make ten do," he said. "Here, take it."

The student thanked him. He ought to have asked him for something more,
for clothes, for lecture fees, for books, but af