n garden
containing cabbages, onions, potatoes, beetroots, and other household
vegetables. Also, the garden contained a few stray fruit trees that
were covered with netting to protect them from the magpies and sparrows;
flocks of which were even then wheeling and darting from one spot to
another. For the same reason a number of scarecrows with outstretched
arms stood reared on long poles, with, surmounting one of the figures,
a cast-off cap of the hostess's. Beyond the garden again there stood a
number of peasants' huts. Though scattered, instead of being arranged in
regular rows, these appeared to Chichikov's eye to comprise well-to-do
inhabitants, since all rotten planks in their roofing had been replaced
with new ones, and none of their doors were askew, and such of their
tiltsheds as faced him evinced evidence of a presence of a spare
waggon--in some cases almost a new one.

"This lady owns by no means a poor village," said Chichikov to himself;
wherefore he decided then and there to have a talk with his hostess, and
to cultivate her closer acquaintance. Accordingly he peeped through the
chink of the door whence her head had recently protruded, and, on seeing
her seated at a tea table, entered and greeted her with a cheerful,
kindly smile.

"Good morning, dear sir," she responded as she rose. "How have you
slept?" She was dressed in better style than she had been on the
previous evening. That is to say, she was now wearing a gown of some
dark colour, and lacked her nightcap, and had swathed her neck in
something stiff.

"I have slept exceedingly well," replied Chichikov, seating himself upon
a chair. "And how are YOU, good madam?"

"But poorly, my dear sir."

"And why so?"

"Because I cannot sleep. A pain has taken me in my middle, and my legs,
from the ankles upwards, are aching as though they were broken."

"That will pass, that will pass, good mother. You must pay no attention
to it."

"God grant that it MAY pass. However, I have been rubbing myself with
lard and turpentine. What sort of tea will you take? In this jar I have
some of the scented kind."

"Excellent, good mother! Then I will take that."

Probably the reader will have noticed that, for all his expressions of
solicitude, Chichikov's tone towards his hostess partook of a freer, a
more unceremonious, nature than that which he had adopted towards Madam
Manilov. And here I should like to assert that, howsoever much, in
certain respects, we R