'No, frogs.'
'Do you eat them—or keep them?'
'For experiment,' said Bazarov indifferently, and he went off into the house.
'So he's going to cut them up,' observed Pavel Petrovitch. 'He has no faith in principles, but he has faith in frogs.'
Arkady looked compassionately at his uncle; Nikolai Petrovitch shrugged his shoulders stealthily. Pavel Petrovitch himself felt that his epigram was unsuccessful, and began to talk about husbandry and the new bailiff, who had come to him the evening before to complain that a labourer, Foma, 'was deboshed,' and quite unmanageable. 'He's such an Æsop,' he said among other things; 'in all places he has protested himself a worthless fellow; he's not a man to keep his place; he'll walk off in a huff like a fool.'
CHAPTER VI
Bazarov came back, sat down to the table, and began hastily drinking tea. The two brothers looked at him in silence, while Arkady stealthily watched first his father and then his uncle.
'Did you walk far from here?' Nikolai Petrovitch asked at last.
'Where you've a little swamp near the aspen wood. I started some half-dozen snipe; you might slaughter them; Arkady.'