Stakhovitch.

When my father heard of it, he said jokingly to
Agafya Mikhailovna:

"Aren't you ashamed that a man had to trudge two miles
through the frost at night all for the sake of your telegram?"

"Trudge, trudge? Angels bore him on their wings. Trudge,
indeed! You get three telegrams from an outlandish Jew woman,"
she growled, "and telegrams every day about your Golokhvotika.
Never a trudge then; but I get name-day greetings, and it's
trudge!"

And one could not but acknowledge that she was right. This
telegram, the only one in the whole year that was addressed to
the kennels, by the pleasure it gave Agafya
Mikhailovna was far more important of course than this
news or the about a ball given in Moscow in honor of a Jewish
banker's daughter, or about Olga Andreyevna
Golokvastovy's arrival at Yasnaya.

Agafya Mikhailovna died at the beginning of
the nineties. There were no more hounds or sporting dogs at
Yasnaya then, but till the end of her days she gave
shelter to a motley collection of mongrels, and tended and fed
them.


THE HOME OF THE TOLSTOYS