"Why, imagine this is Socrates! 'Know thyself,'" said my father, telling the story with great enthusiasm.
In the summer-time my mother's brother, Styopa (Stephen Behrs), who was studying at the time in the school of jurisprudence, used to come and stay with us. In the autumn he used to go wolf-hunting with my father and us, with the borzois, and Agafya Mikhailovna loved him for that.
Styopa's examination was in the spring. Agafya Mikhailovna knew about it and anxiously waited for the news of whether he had got through.
Once she put up a candle before the eikon and prayed that Styopa might pass. But at that moment she remembered that her borzois had got out and had not come back to the kennels again.
"Saints in heaven! they'll get into some place and worry the cattle and do a mischief!" she cried. "'Lord, let my candle burn for the dogs to come back quick, and I'll buy another for Stepan Andreyevitch.' No sooner had I said this to myself than I heard the dogs in the porch rattling their collars. Thank God! they were back. That's what prayer can do."
Another favorite of Agafya Mikhailovna was a young man, Misha Stakhovitch, who often stayed with us.
"See what you have been and done to me, little Countess!" she said reproachfully to my sister Tanya: "you've introduced me to Mikhail Alexandrovitch, and I've fallen in love with him in my old age, like a wicked woman!"
On the fifth of February, her name-day, Agafya Mikhailovna received a telegram of congratulation from Stakhovitch.
When my father heard of it, he said jokingly to Agafya Mikhailovna:
"Aren't you ashamed that a man had to trudge two miles through the frost at night all for the sake of your telegram?"