"Yes, the hut is very miserable," said the bárin, looking into the face of Churis, who, it seems, had not cared to speak first about this state of things.
"It will crush us to death; it will crush the children," said the woman in a tearful voice, attending to the stove which stood under the loft.
"Hold your tongue," cried Churis sternly; and with a slight smile playing under his mustaches, he turned to the master. "And I haven't the wit to know what's to be done with it, your excellency,—with this hut and props and planks. There's nothing to be done with them."
"How can we live through the winter here? Okh, okh! Oh, oh!" groaned the old woman.
"There's one thing—if we put in some more props and laid a new floor," said the husband, interrupting her with a calm, practical expression, "and threw over one set of rafters, then perhaps we might manage to get through the winter. It is possible to live; but you'd have to put some props all over the hut, like that: but if it gets shaken, then there won't be any thing left of it. As long as it stands, it holds together," he concluded, evidently perfectly contented that he appreciated this contingency.
Nekhliudof was both vexed and grieved that Churis had got himself into such a condition, without having come to him long before; since he had more than once, during his sojourn on the estate, told the peasants, and insisted upon it, that they should all apply directly to him for whatever they needed.
He now felt some indignation against the peasant; he angrily shrugged his shoulders, and frowned. But the sight of the poverty in the midst of which he found himself, and Churis's calm and self-satisfied appearance in contrast with this poverty, changed his vexation into a sort of feeling of melancholy and hopelessness.
"Well, Iván, why on earth didn't you tell me about this before?" he asked in a tone of reproach, as he took a seat on the filthy, unsteady bench.
"I didn't dare to, your excellency," replied Churis with the same scarcely perceptible smile, shuffling with his black, bare feet over the uneven surface of the mud floor; but this he said so fearlessly and with such composure, that it was hard to believe that he had any timidity about going to his master.
"We are mere peasants; how could we be so presuming?" began the old woman, sobbing.