“Oh, the naughty darling!” the nurse muttered to herself as she dragged him back on to the veranda. The child looked about him with the keen, observant glance of a “grown-up” who is debating how best a morning can be spent. Not a trifle, not a circumstance, escaped the child’s inquisitive attention, so that insensibly the picture of his home life engraved itself upon his mind, and his sensitive intellect nourished itself on living examples, and involuntarily modelled its programme of life on the life which surrounded it.
Never at any time could it be said that the morning was wasted in the Oblomovs’ establishment. The sound of knives in the kitchen, as they minced cutlets and vegetables, reached even to the village; while from the servants’ quarters came the hum of a spindle, coupled with the thin, low voice of an old woman—but a voice so low that with difficulty could one distinguish whether she were weeping, or whether she were merely improvising to herself a mournful “song without words.” Also, on Antip returning with the watercart, there would advance to meet it, with pails, cans, and pitchers, a number of maidservants and grooms, while from the storehouse an old woman would produce a vessel of meal and a pile of eggs, and carry them to the kitchen. There, on the cook suddenly throwing some water out of the window, the cat Arapka—which, with eyes fixed upon the view, had spent the morning in agitating the tip of her tail and licking herself—came in for a splashing.
The head of the family, too, was not idle, for he spent the morning in sitting by the window and following with his eyes everything which took place in the courtyard.
“Hi, Ignashka, what have you there, you rascal?” he cried to a man who happened to cross the open space.
“Some knives to be sharpened in the scullery,” the man replied, without looking at his master.
“Very well, then. Mind you sharpen them properly.”
Next, the master stopped one of the maidservants.
“Where are you going?” he inquired.
“To the cellar to get some milk for the table,” she replied, shading her eyes with her hand.
“Good!” he pronounced. “And see that you don’t spill any. You, Zakharka—where are you off to once more? This is the third time I have seen you gadding about. Go back to your place in the hall.” Whereupon Zakharka returned to her day-dreams at the post mentioned. Again, as soon as the cows returned from pasture, old Oblomov was always there to see that they were properly watered. Also, when, from his post at the window, he chanced to observe the yard-dog chasing one of the hens he hastened to take the necessary measures against a recurrence of such conduct. In the same way, his wife was fully employed. For three hours she discussed with Averka, the tailor, the best ways and means of converting a waistcoat of her husband’s into a jacket for her son—herself drawing the requisite lines in chalk, and seeing to it that Averka should pilfer not a morsel of the cloth. Thereafter she passed to the maids’ room, where she parcelled cut to each damsel the day’s portion of lacemaking; whence she departed to summon one of her personal maids to attend her in the garden, for the purpose of seeing how the apples were swelling, which of them had fallen or were turning ripe, which trees wanted grafting or pruning, and so forth. But her chief care was the kitchen and the dinner. Concerning the latter she consulted the entire household, including the aged aunt. Each member of the family proposed a special dish, and the sum of these proposals was taken into consideration, adjudicated upon in detail, and adopted or rejected according to the final decision of the mistress. From time to time, also, a maid was dispatched to the culinary regions to remind the cook of this, or to tell her to add that, or to instruct her to change the other, while conveying to her sugar, honey, and wine for flavouring, and also seeing to it that the said cook was using everything which had been measured out. In fact, the supervision of food was the first and the principal domestic preoccupation of Oblomovka.