twenty begin to live."

Tatyana Ivanovna dropped a knitting-needle. My uncle jumped up, picked
up the needle, and handed it to Tatyana Ivanovna with a bow, and for the
first time in my life I learnt that there were people in the world more
refined than Pobyedimsky.

"Yes..." my uncle went on, "love, marry, do silly things. Foolishness
is a great deal more living and healthy than our straining and striving
after rational life."

My uncle talked a great deal, so much that he bored us; I sat on a box
listening to him and dropping to sleep. It distressed me that he did
not once all the evening pay attention to me. He left the lodge at two
o'clock, when, overcome with drowsiness, I was sound asleep.

From that time forth my uncle took to coming to the lodge every evening.
He sang with us, had supper with us, and always stayed on till two
o'clock in the morning, chatting incessantly, always about the same
subject. His evening and night work was given up, and by the end of
June, when the privy councillor had learned to eat mother's turkey and
_compote_, his work by day was abandoned too. My uncle tore himself away
from his table and plunged into "life." In the daytime he walked up
and down the garden, he whistled to the workmen and hindered them from
working, making them tell him their various histories. When his eye
fell on Tatyana Ivanovna he ran up to her, and, if she were carrying
anything, offered his assistance, which embarrassed her dreadfully.

As the summer advanced my uncle grew more and more frivolous, volatile,
and careless. Pobyedimsky was completely disillusioned in regard to him.

"He is too one-sided," he said. "There is nothing to show that he is in
the very foremost ranks of the service. And he doesn't even know how to
talk. At every word it's 'upon my soul.' No, I don't like him!"

From the time that my uncle began visiting the lodge there was a
noticeable change both in Fyodor and my tutor. Fyodor gave up going out
shooting, came home early, sat more taciturn than ever, and stared with
particular ill-humour at his wife. In my uncle's presence my tutor gave
up talking about epizootics, frowned, and even laughed sarcastically.

"Here comes our little bantam cock!" he growled on one occasion when my
uncle was coming into the lodge.

I put down this change in them both to their being offended with my
uncle. My absent-minded uncle mixed up their names, and to the very day
of his departure failed to dis