water--on a tray, do you
hear?--and you, gentlemen,' he added, with a kind of old-fashioned
playfulness, 'let me ask you into the study of a retired old veteran.'

'Just once more let me embrace you, Enyusha,' moaned Arina Vlasyevna.
Bazarov bent down to her. 'Why, what a handsome fellow you have grown!'

'Well, I don't know about being handsome,' remarked Vassily Ivanovitch,
'but he's a man, as the saying is, _ommfay_. And now I hope, Arina
Vlasyevna, that having satisfied your maternal heart, you will turn
your thoughts to satisfying the appetites of our dear guests, because,
as you're aware, even nightingales can't be fed on fairy tales.'

The old lady got up from her chair. 'This minute, Vassily Ivanovitch,
the table shall be laid. I will run myself to the kitchen and order the
samovar to be brought in; everything shall be ready, everything. Why, I
have not seen him, not given him food or drink these three years; is
that nothing?'

'There, mind, good mother, bustle about; don't put us to shame; while
you, gentlemen, I beg you to follow me. Here's Timofeitch come to pay
his respects to you, Yevgeny. He, too, I daresay, is delighted, the old
dog. Eh, aren't you delighted, old dog? Be so good as to follow me.'

And Vassily Ivanovitch went bustling forward, scraping and flapping
with his slippers trodden down at heel.

His whole house consisted of six tiny rooms. One of them--the one to
which he led our friends--was called the study. A thick-legged table,
littered over with papers black with the accumulation of ancient dust
as though they had been smoked, occupied all the space between the two
windows; on the walls hung Turkish firearms, whips, a sabre, two maps,
some anatomical diagrams, a portrait of Hoffland, a monogram woven in
hair in a blackened frame, and a diploma under glass; a leather sofa,
torn and worn into hollows in parts, was placed between two huge
cupboards of birch-wood; on the shelves books, boxes, stuffed birds,
jars, and phials were huddled together in confusion; in one corner
stood a broken galvanic battery.

'I warned you, my dear Arkady Nikolaitch,' began Vassily Ivanitch,
'that we live, so to say, bivouacking....'

'There, stop that, what are you apologising for?' Bazarov interrupted.
'Kirsanov knows very well we're not Croesuses, and that you have no
butler. Where are we going to put him, that's the question?'

'To be sure, Yevgeny; I have a capital room there in the little lodge;
he