pulling up the horses. It was a wide courtyard without grass, with
five immense blocks of buildings with tall chimneys a little distance
one from another, warehouses and barracks, and over everything a
sort of grey powder as though from dust. Here and there, like oases
in the desert, there were pitiful gardens, and the green and red
roofs of the houses in which the managers and clerks lived. The
coachman suddenly pulled up the horses, and the carriage stopped
at the house, which had been newly painted grey; here was a flower
garden, with a lilac bush covered with dust, and on the yellow steps
at the front door there was a strong smell of paint.

"Please come in, doctor," said women's voices in the passage and
the entry, and at the same time he heard sighs and whisperings.
"Pray walk in. . . . We've been expecting you so long . . . we're
in real trouble. Here, this way."

Madame Lyalikov--a stout elderly lady wearing a black silk dress
with fashionable sleeves, but, judging from her face, a simple
uneducated woman--looked at the doctor in a flutter, and could
not bring herself to hold out her hand to him; she did not dare.
Beside her stood a personage with short hair and a pince-nez; she
was wearing a blouse of many colours, and was very thin and no
longer young. The servants called her Christina Dmitryevna, and
Korolyov guessed that this was the governess. Probably, as the
person of most education in the house, she had been charged to meet
and receive the doctor, for she began immediately, in great haste,
stating the causes of the illness, giving trivial and tiresome
details, but without saying who was ill or what was the matter.

The doctor and the governess were sitting talking while the lady