“Why have you not been near us for so long, Leonti Ivanovich? Borushka says that I don’t know how to entertain you, and that you don’t like my table. Did you tell him so?”
“How should I not like it? When did I say such a thing?” he asked Raisky severely. “You are joking!” he went on, as everybody laughed, and he himself had to smile.
He had had time to find his own bearings, and had begun to realise the necessity of hiding his grief from others.
“Yes, it is a long time since I was here. My wife has gone to Moscow to visit her relations, so that I could not....”
“You ought to have come straight to us,” observed Tatiana Markovna, “when it was so dull by yourself at home.”
“I expect her, and am always afraid she may come when I am not at home.”
“You would soon hear of her arrival, and she must pass our house. From the windows of the old house we can see who comes along the road, and we will stop her.”
“It is true that the road to Moscow can be seen from there,” said Koslov, looking quickly, and almost happily, at his hostess.
“Come and stay with us,” she said.
“I simply will not let you go to-day,” said Raisky. “I am bored by myself, and we will move over into the old house. After Marfinka’s wedding I am going away, and you will be Grandmother’s and Vera’s first minister, friend and protector.”