He felt miserable at being alone in the open country; he turned
back and drove slowly after the sledges, and the women laughed and
said:

"Godly has turned back."

At home nothing had been cooked and the samovar was not heated on
account of the fast, and this made the day seem very long. Yakov
Ivanitch had long ago taken the horse to the stable, dispatched the
flour to the station, and twice taken up the Psalms to read, and
yet the evening was still far off. Aglaia has already washed all
the floors, and, having nothing to do, was tidying up her chest,
the lid of which was pasted over on the inside with labels off
bottles. Matvey, hungry and melancholy, sat reading, or went up to
the Dutch stove and slowly scrutinized the tiles which reminded him
of the factory. Dashutka was asleep; then, waking up, she went to
take water to the cattle. When she was getting water from the well
the cord broke and the pail fell in. The labourer began looking for
a boathook to get the pail out, and Dashutka, barefooted, with legs
as red as a goose's, followed him about in the muddy snow, repeating:
"It's too far!" She meant to say that the well was too deep for the
hook to reach the bottom, but the labourer did not understand her,
and evidently she bothered him, so that he suddenly turned around
and abused her in unseemly language. Yakov Ivanitch, coming out
that moment into the yard, heard Dashutka answer the labourer in a
long rapid stream of choice abuse, which she could only have learned
from drunken peasants in the tavern.

"What are you saying, shameless girl!" he cried to her, and he was