The peasant woman turned at once and bowed very low.
‘Yes, sir,’ sounded her weak voice.
‘Ay, ay! Yonder, look,’ Martin Petrovitch continued, proceeding at a trot alongside a half-rotting wattle fence, ‘that is my hemp-patch; and that yonder’s the peasants’; see the difference? And this here is my garden; the apple-trees I planted, and the willows I planted too. Else there was no timber of any sort here. Look at that, and learn a lesson!’
We turned into the courtyard, shut in by a fence; right opposite the gate, rose an old tumbledown lodge, with a thatch roof, and steps up to it, raised on posts. On one side stood another, rather newer, and with a tiny attic; but it too was a ramshackly affair. ‘Here you may learn a lesson again,’ observed Harlov; ‘see what a little manor-house our fathers lived in; but now see what a mansion I have built myself.’ This ‘mansion’ was like a house of cards. Five or six dogs, one more ragged and hideous than another, welcomed us with barking. ‘Sheep-dogs!’ observed Martin Petrovitch. ‘Pure-bred Crimeans! Sh, damned brutes! I’ll come and strangle you one after another!’ On the steps of the new building, there came out a young man, in a long full nankeen overall, the husband of Martin Petrovitch’s elder daughter. Skipping quickly up to the droshky, he respectfully supported his father-in-law under the elbow as he got up, and even made as though he would hold the gigantic feet, which the latter, bending his bulky person forward, lifted with a sweeping movement across the seat; then he assisted me to dismount from my horse.
‘Anna!’ cried Harlov, ‘Natalia Nikolaevna’s son has come to pay us a visit; you must find some good cheer for him. But where’s Evlampia?’ (Anna was the name of the elder daughter, Evlampia of the younger.)
‘She’s not at home; she’s gone into the fields to get cornflowers,’ responded Anna, appearing at a little window near the door.
‘Is there any junket?’ queried Harlov.
‘Yes.’
‘And cream too?’
‘Yes.’