At first I had intended to fit up an abode for us two, Masha and
me, in the lodge at the side opposite Madame Tcheprakov's lodge,
but it appeared that the doves and the ducks had been living there
for a long time, and it was impossible to clean it without destroying
a great number of nests. There was nothing for it but to live in
the comfortless rooms of the big house with the sunblinds. The
peasants called the house the palace; there were more than twenty
rooms in it, and the only furniture was a piano and a child's
arm-chair lying in the attic. And if Masha had brought all her
furniture from the town we should even then have been unable to get
rid of the impression of immense emptiness and cold. I picked out
three small rooms with windows looking into the garden, and worked
from early morning till night, setting them to rights, putting in
new panes, papering the walls, filling up the holes and chinks in
the floors. It was easy, pleasant work. I was continually running
to the river to see whether the ice were not going; I kept fancying
that starlings were flying. And at night, thinking of Masha, I
listened with an unutterably sweet feeling, with clutching delight
to the noise of the rats and the wind droning and knocking above
the ceiling. It seemed as though some old house spirit were coughing
in the attic.

The snow was deep; a great deal had fallen even at the end of March,
but it melted quickly, as though by magic, and the spring floods
passed in a tumultuous rush, so that by the beginning of April the
starlings were already noisy, and yellow butterflies were flying
in the garden. It was exquisite weather. Every day, towards evening,
I used to walk to the town to meet Masha, and what a delight it was
to walk with bare feet along the gradually drying, still soft road.