ploughing; a piebald colt, with a cropped tail and ruffled mane, is
running on unsteady legs after its mother; its shrill whinnying reaches
us. We drive on into the birch wood, and drink in the strong, sweet,
fresh fragrance. Here we are at the boundaries. The coachman gets down;
the horses snort; the trace-horses look round; the centre horse in the
shafts switches his tail, and turns his head up towards the wooden yoke
above it... the great gate opens creaking; the coachman seats
himself.... Drive on! the village is before us. Passing five homesteads,
and turning off to the right, we drop down into a hollow and drive along
a dyke, the farther side of a small pond; behind the round tops of the
lilacs and apple-trees a wooden roof, once red, with two chimneys, comes
into sight; the coachman keeps along the hedge to the left, and to the
spasmodic and drowsy baying of three pug dogs he drives through the wide
open gates, whisks smartly round the broad courtyard past the stable and
the barn, gallantly salutes the old housekeeper, who is stepping
sideways over the high lintel in the open doorway of the storehouse, and
pulls up at last before the steps of a dark house with light windows....
We are at Tatyana Borissovna's. And here she is herself opening the
window and nodding at us.... 'Good day, ma'am!'

Tatyana Borissovna is a woman of fifty, with large, prominent grey eyes,
a rather broad nose, rosy cheeks and a double chin. Her face is brimming
over with friendliness and kindness. She was once married, but was soon
left a widow. Tatyana Borissovna is a very remarkable woman. She lives
on her little property, never leaving it, mixes very little with her
neighbours, sees and likes none but young people. She was the daughter
of very poor landowners, and received no education; in other words, she
does not know French; she has never been in Moscow--and in spite of all
these defects, she is so good and simple in her manners, so broad in her
sympathies and ideas, so little infected with the ordinary prejudices of