used to lure us as children into the kitchen, and put us in the
mood for hearing fairy tales and playing at "Kings" . . .

"Where's Kleopatra?" Axinya asked softly, in a fluster, holding her
breath; "and where is your cap, my dear? Your wife, you say, has
gone to Petersburg?"

She had been our servant in our mother's time, and used once to
give Kleopatra and me our baths, and to her we were still children
who had to be talked to for their good. For a quarter of an hour
or so she laid before me all the reflections which she had with the
sagacity of an old servant been accumulating in the stillness of
that kitchen, all the time since we had seen each other. She said
that the doctor could be forced to marry Kleopatra; he only needed
to be thoroughly frightened; and that if an appeal were promptly
written the bishop would annul the first marriage; that it would
be a good thing for me to sell Dubetchnya without my wife's knowledge,
and put the money in the bank in my own name; that if my sister and
I were to bow down at my father's feet and ask him properly, he
might perhaps forgive us; that we ought to have a service sung to
the Queen of Heaven. . . .

"Come, go along, my dear, and speak to him," she said, when she
heard my father's cough. "Go along, speak to him; bow down, your
head won't drop off."

I went in. My father was sitting at the table sketching a plan of
a summer villa, with Gothic windows, and with a fat turret like a
fireman's watch tower--something peculiarly stiff and tasteless.
Going into the study I stood still where I could see this drawing.