VI
Bazarov, returning, seated himself at the table, and fell to drinking tea. The brothers contemplated him in silence. Arkady glanced covertly from his father to his uncle, and back again.
"Have you walked far this morning?" at length Nikolai Petrovitch inquired.
"To a marsh beside an aspen coppice. By the way, Arkady, I flushed five head of woodcock. Perhaps you would like to go and shoot them?"
"Then you yourself are no sportsman?"
"No."
"That is to say, you prefer physics to anything else?" This from Paul Petrovitch.
"Yes, I prefer physics—in fact, the natural sciences in general—to anything else."
"Well, I am told that the Germanics have made great strides in that department?" (Paul Petrovitch used the term "Germanics" instead of "Germans" ironically, but no one noticed it.)