"Do step out!"
He pulled his cap down, and submissively passed through the door. The porter took him under his arm, but, seeing that the old man was walking well, he at once offered his services to the lady. Judging from the sable cloak, and from the time it took for her to emerge, and from the way she pressed down on his arm, and from the way she, leaning on her son's arm, walked straight toward the porch, without looking to either side, Natálya Nikoláevna, his wife, seemed to the porter to be an important personage. He did not even separate the young lady from the maids, who climbed out from the other vehicle; like them, she carried a bundle and a pipe, and walked behind. He recognized her only by her laughing and by her calling the old man father.
"Not that way, father,—to the right!" she said, taking hold of the sleeve of his sheepskin coat. "To the right."
On the staircase there resounded, through the noise of the steps, the doors, and the heavy breathing of the elderly lady, the same laughter which had been heard in the vehicle, and about which any one who heard it thought: "How excellently she laughs,—I just envy her."
Their son, Sergyéy, had attended to all the material conditions on the road, and, though he lacked knowledge of the matter, he had attended to it with the energy and self-satisfying activity which are characteristic of twenty-five years of age. Some twenty times, and apparently for no important reason, he ran down to the sleigh in his greatcoat, and ran up-stairs again, shivering in the cold and taking two or three steps at a time with his long, youthful legs. Natálya Nikoláevna asked him not to catch a cold, but he said that it was all right, and continued to give orders, slamming doors, and walking, and, when it seemed that only the servants and peasants had to be attended to, he several times walked through all the rooms, leaving the drawing-room by one door, and coming in through another, as though he were looking for something else to do.
"Well, papa, will you be driven to the bath-house? Shall I find out?" he asked.
His papa was deep in thought and, it seemed, was not at all conscious of where he was. He did not answer at once. He heard the words, but did not comprehend them. Suddenly he comprehended.
"Yes, yes, yes. Find out, if you please, at Stone Bridge."
The head of the family walked through the rooms with hasty, agitated steps, and seated himself in a chair.
"Now we must decide what to do, how to arrange matters," he said. "Help along, children, lively! Like good fellows, drag things around, put them up, and to-morrow we shall send Serézha with a note to sister Márya Ivánovna, to the Nikítins, or we shall go there ourselves. Am I right, Natásha? But now, fix things!"