‘I have come for instructions. There’s no doing anything without men to help. The peasants there are all limp with fright.’
‘And his daughters—what of them?’
‘His daughters are doing nothing. They’re running to and fro, shouting … this and that … all to no purpose.’
‘And is Sletkin there?’
‘He’s there too. He’s making more outcry than all of them—but he can’t do anything.’
‘And Martin Petrovitch is standing on the roof?’
‘On the roof … that is, in the garret—and pulling the roof to pieces.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said my mother, ‘half-inches wide apart.’
The position was obviously a serious one. What steps were to be taken? Send to the town for the police captain? Get together the peasants? My mother was quite at her wits’ end. Zhitkov, who had come in to dinner, was nonplussed too. It is true, he made another reference to a battalion of military; he offered no advice, however, but confined himself to looking submissive and devoted. Kvitsinsky, seeing he would not get at any instructions, suggested to my mother—with the contemptuous respectfulness peculiar to him—that if she would authorise him to take a few of the stable-boys, gardeners, and other house-serfs, he would make an effort.…