[1] A member of the trading or shopkeeping class.
IV
There issued on to the verandah to greet the arrivals no throng of household serfs—only a solitary girl of twelve. Presently, however, she was joined by a young fellow much resembling Peter, but dressed in a grey livery coat to which embossed, silver-gilt buttons were attached. This was Paul Kirsanov's valet. In silence he opened the door of the koliaska, and unhooked the apron of the tarantass; whereupon the three gentlemen alighted, passed through a dark, bare hall (the face of a young woman peered at them for a moment from behind a door), and entered a drawing-room upholstered in the latest fashion.
"So here we are at home again!" exclaimed Nikolai Petrovitch, taking off his cap, and shaking back his hair. "Let us have supper, and then for bed, bed!"
"Yes, something to eat would undoubtedly be welcome," remarked Bazarov as, yawning, he seated himself upon a sofa.
"Quite so; I will have supper served at once." Nikolai Petrovitch, for no apparent reason, tripped over his own feet. "And here comes Prokofitch," he added.
As he spoke entered a man of about sixty who, white-haired, and of thin, swarthy features, was wearing a cinnamon-coloured tail-coat with brass buttons and a crimson collar. He smiled with delight as he approached and shook hands with Arkady. Then, with a bow to the guest, he retired to the doorway, and folded his hands behind his back.
"So here is the young master, Prokofitch!" said Nikolai Petrovitch. "He is home at last. And how, think you, is he looking?"
"Very well, very well," the old man said with another smile. The next moment, however, he knit his shaggy brows, and suggested: "Shall I lay the table?"