beams forty feet high, standing on end, was marching upon the
timber-yard; that logs, beams, and boards knocked together with the
resounding crash of dry wood, kept falling and getting up again,
piling themselves on each other. Olenka cried out in her sleep, and
Pustovalov said to her tenderly: "Olenka, what's the matter, darling?
Cross yourself!"

Her husband's ideas were hers. If he thought the room was too hot,
or that business was slack, she thought the same. Her husband did
not care for entertainments, and on holidays he stayed at home. She
did likewise.

"You are always at home or in the office," her friends said to her.
"You should go to the theatre, darling, or to the circus."

"Vassitchka and I have no time to go to theatres," she would answer
sedately. "We have no time for nonsense. What's the use of these
theatres?"

On Saturdays Pustovalov and she used to go to the evening service;
on holidays to early mass, and they walked side by side with softened
faces as they came home from church. There was a pleasant fragrance
about them both, and her silk dress rustled agreeably. At home they
drank tea, with fancy bread and jams of various kinds, and afterwards
they ate pie. Every day at twelve o'clock there was a savoury smell
of beet-root soup and of mutton or duck in their yard, and on
fast-days of fish, and no one could pass the gate without feeling
hungry. In the office the samovar was always boiling, and customers
were regaled with tea and cracknels. Once a week the couple went
to the baths and returned side by side, both red in the face.