change in
the course of those eight years; but Marya Dmitrievna's house seems to
have grown young: its recently painted walls shine as in welcome, and the
panes of the open windows are crimsoning and glittering in the rays of the
setting sun. Through these windows, out upon the street, are wafted the
sounds of ringing young voices, of incessant laughter; the whole house
seems bubbling with life, and overflowing the brim with merriment. The
mistress of the house herself has long since gone to her grave: Marya
Dmitrievna died two years after Liza's profession as a nun; and Marfa
Timofeevna did not long survive her niece; they rest side by side in the
town cemetery. Nastasya Karpovna, also, is dead; the faithful old woman
went, every week, for the space of several years, to pray over the ashes
of her friend.... Her time came, and her bones also were laid in the damp
earth. But Marya Dmitrievna's house has not passed into the hands of
strangers, has not left her family; the nest has not been destroyed:
Lyenotchka, who has become a stately, beautiful young girl, and her
betrothed, a fair-haired officer of hussars; Marya Dmitrievna's son, who
has just been married in Petersburg, and has come with his young wife to
spend the spring in O * * *; his wife's sister, an Institute-girl of
sixteen, with brilliantly scarlet cheeks and clear eyes; Schurotchka, who
has also grown up and become pretty--these are the young folks who are
making the walls of the Kalitin house re-echo with laughter and chatter.
Everything about it has been changed, everything has been brought into
accord with the new inhabitants. Beardless young house-servants, who grin
and jest, have taken the places of the former sedate old servitors; where
overgrown Roska was wont to stroll, two setters are chasing madly about,
and leaping over the divans; the stable has been filled with clean-limbed
amblers, high-spirited shaft-horses, fiery trace-horses with braided
manes, and riding-horses from the Don; the hours for breakfast, dinner,
and supper have become mixed up and confused; according to the expression
of the neighbours, "an unprecedented state of affairs" has been
established.

On the evening of which we are speaking, the inhabitants of the Kalitin
house (the oldest of them, Lyenotchka's betrothed, was only four and
twenty) were engaged in a far from complicated, but, judging from their
vigorous laughter, a very amusing game: they were running through the
rooms