... a fine fellow..." muttered my uncle, taking his hand
from my lips and stroking me on the head. "So your name is Andrusha?
Yes, yes.... H'm!... upon my soul!... Do you learn lessons?"

My mother, exaggerating and embellishing as all mothers do, began
to describe my achievements in the sciences and the excellence of my
behaviour, and I walked round my uncle and, following the ceremonial
laid down for me, I continued making low bows. Then my mother began
throwing out hints that with my remarkable abilities it would not be
amiss for me to get a government nomination to the cadet school; but at
the point when I was to have burst into tears and begged for my
uncle's protection, my uncle suddenly stopped and flung up his hands in
amazement.

"My goo-oodness! What's that?" he asked.

Tatyana Ivanovna, the wife of our bailiff, Fyodor Petrovna, was coming
towards us. She was carrying a starched white petticoat and a long
ironing-board. As she passed us she looked shyly at the visitor through
her eyelashes and flushed crimson.

"Wonders will never cease..." my uncle filtered through his teeth,
looking after her with friendly interest. "You have a fresh surprise at
every step, sister... upon my soul!"

"She's a beauty..." said mother. "They chose her as a bride for Fyodor,
though she lived over seventy miles from here...."

Not every one would have called Tatyana a beauty. She was a plump little
woman of twenty, with black eyebrows and a graceful figure, always rosy
and attractive-looking, but in her face and in her whole person there
was not one striking feature, not one bold line to catch the eye, as
though nature had lacked inspiration and confidence when creating her.
Tatyana Ivanovna was shy, bashful, and modest in her behaviour; she
moved softly and smoothly, said little, seldom laughed, and her whole
life was as regular as her face and as flat as her smooth, tidy hair. My
uncle screwed up his eyes looking after her, and smiled. Mother looked
intently at his smiling face and grew serious.

"And so, brother, you've never married!" she sighed.

"No; I've not married."

"Why not?" asked mother softly.

"How can I tell you? It has happened so. In my youth I was too hard
at work, I had no time to live, and when I longed to live--I looked
round--and there I had fifty years on my back already. I was too late!
However, talking about it... is depressing."

My mother and my uncle both sighed at once and walked on, and