t
man whom one could thoroughly depend upon, and that any girl would
be glad to marry him. Three days later Pustovalov came himself. He
did not stay long, only about ten minutes, and he did not say much,
but when he left, Olenka loved him--loved him so much that she
lay awake all night in a perfect fever, and in the morning she sent
for the elderly lady. The match was quickly arranged, and then came
the wedding.

Pustovalov and Olenka got on very well together when they were
married.

Usually he sat in the office till dinner-time, then he went out on
business, while Olenka took his place, and sat in the office till
evening, making up accounts and booking orders.

"Timber gets dearer every year; the price rises twenty per cent,"
she would say to her customers and friends. "Only fancy we used to
sell local timber, and now Vassitchka always has to go for wood to
the Mogilev district. And the freight!" she would add, covering her
cheeks with her hands in horror. "The freight!"

It seemed to her that she had been in the timber trade for ages and
ages, and that the most important and necessary thing in life was
timber; and there was something intimate and touching to her in the
very sound of words such as "baulk," "post," "beam," "pole,"
"scantling," "batten," "lath," "plank," etc.

At night when she was asleep she dreamed of perfect mountains of
planks and boards, and long strings of wagons, carting timber
somewhere far away. She dreamed that a whole regiment of six-inch
beams forty feet high, standing on end, was marching upon the
timber-yard; that logs, beams, and boards knocked together with the
resounding crash of dry wood, kept falling and getting up again,
piling themselves on each other. Olenka cried out in her sleep, and
Pustovalov said to her tenderly: "Olenka, what's the matter, darling?
Cross yourself!"

Her husband's ideas were hers. If he thought the room was too hot,
or that business was slack, she thought the same. Her husband did
not care for entertainments, and on holidays he stayed at home. She
did likewise.

"You are always at home or in the office," her friends said to her.
"You should go to the theatre, darling, or to the circus."

"Vassitchka and I have no time to go to theatres," she would answer
sedately. "We have no time for nonsense. What's the use of these
theatres?"

On Saturdays Pustovalov and she used to go to the evening service;
on holidays to early mass, and they walked side by