sweet enjoyment of my morning slumber--Vassili's inexorable face showed
that he would grant me no respite, but that he was ready to tear away
the counterpane twenty times more if necessary. Accordingly I submitted
myself to the inevitable and ran down into the courtyard to wash myself
at the fountain.

In the coffee-room, a tea-kettle was already surmounting the fire which
Milka the ostler, as red in the face as a crab, was blowing with a pair
of bellows. All was grey and misty in the courtyard, like steam from a
smoking dunghill, but in the eastern sky the sun was diffusing a clear,
cheerful radiance, and making the straw roofs of the sheds around the
courtyard sparkle with the night dew. Beneath them stood our horses,
tied to mangers, and I could hear the ceaseless sound of their chewing.
A curly-haired dog which had been spending the night on a dry dunghill
now rose in lazy fashion and, wagging its tail, walked slowly across the
courtyard.

The bustling landlady opened the creaking gates, turned her meditative
cows into the street (whence came the lowing and bellowing of other
cattle), and exchanged a word or two with a sleepy neighbour. Philip,
with his shirt-sleeves rolled up, was working the windlass of a
draw-well, and sending sparkling fresh water coursing into an oaken
trough, while in the pool beneath it some early-rising ducks were taking
a bath. It gave me pleasure to watch his strongly-marked, bearded face,
and the veins and muscles as they stood out upon his great powerful
hands whenever he made an extra effort. In the room behind the
partition-wall where Mimi and the girls had slept (yet so near to
ourselves that we had exchanged confidences overnight) movements now
became audible, their maid kept passing in and out with clothes, and, at
last the door opened and we were summoned to breakfast. Woloda, however,