"What weather!" he said. "It's not weather, but a curse laid upon us.
It's raining again!"

He grumbled on, while his family sat waiting at table for him to have
finished washing his hands before beginning dinner. Fedosya Semyonovna,
his wife, his son Pyotr, a student, his eldest daughter Varvara, and
three small boys, had been sitting waiting a long time. The boys--Kolka,
Vanka, and Arhipka--grubby, snub-nosed little fellows with chubby faces
and tousled hair that wanted cutting, moved their chairs impatiently,
while their elders sat without stirring, and apparently did not care
whether they ate their dinner or waited....

As though trying their patience, Shiryaev deliberately dried his hands,
deliberately said his prayer, and sat down to the table without hurrying
himself. Cabbage-soup was served immediately. The sound of carpenters'
axes (Shiryaev was having a new barn built) and the laughter of Fomka,
their labourer, teasing the turkey, floated in from the courtyard.

Big, sparse drops of rain pattered on the window.

Pyotr, a round-shouldered student in spectacles, kept exchanging glances
with his mother as he ate his dinner. Several times he laid down his
spoon and cleared his throat, meaning to begin to speak, but after an
intent look at his father he fell to eating again. At last, when the
porridge had been served, he cleared his throat resolutely and said:

"I ought to go tonight by the evening train. I out to have gone before;
I have missed a fortnight as it is. The lectures begin on the first of
September."