could judge of its decrepit age and readiness to drop to pieces.

Two of the inhabitants of N. were sitting in the chaise; they were
a merchant of N. called Ivan Ivanitch Kuzmitchov, a man with a
shaven face wearing glasses and a straw hat, more like a government
clerk than a merchant, and Father Christopher Sireysky, the priest
of the Church of St. Nikolay at N., a little old man with long hair,
in a grey canvas cassock, a wide-brimmed top-hat and a coloured
embroidered girdle. The former was absorbed in thought, and kept
tossing his head to shake off drowsiness; in his countenance an
habitual business-like reserve was struggling with the genial
expression of a man who has just said good-bye to his relatives and
has had a good drink at parting. The latter gazed with moist eyes
wonderingly at God's world, and his smile was so broad that it
seemed to embrace even the brim of his hat; his face was red and
looked frozen. Both of them, Father Christopher as well as Kuzmitchov,
were going to sell wool. At parting with their families they had
just eaten heartily of pastry puffs and cream, and although it was
so early in the morning had had a glass or two. . . . Both were in
the best of humours.

Apart from the two persons described above and the coachman Deniska,
who lashed the pair of frisky bay horses, there was another figure
in the chaise--a boy of nine with a sunburnt face, wet with tears.
This was Yegorushka, Kuzmitchov's nephew. With the sanction of his
uncle and the blessing of Father Christopher, he was now on his way
to go to school. His mother, Olga Ivanovna, the widow of a collegiate
secretary, and Kuzmitchov's sister, who was fond of educated people
and refined society, had entreated her brother to take Yegorushka
with him when he went to sell wool and to put him to school; and