a wide bed. She had risen early, at ten o'clock, and had with
pleasure helped the cook scrub the floor and the tables in the
kitchen. Now she is feeding the chained dog Amour with the sinews
and cuttings of the meat. The big, rusty hound, with long
glistening hair and black muzzle, jumps up on the girl--with his
front paws, stretching the chain tightly and rattling in the
throat from shortness of breath, then, with back and tail
undulating all over, bends his head down to the ground, wrinkles
his nose, smiles, whines and sneezes from the excitement. But she,
teasing him with the meat, shouts at him with pretended severity:

"There, you--stupid! I'll--I'll give it to you! How dare you?"

But she rejoices with all her soul over the tumult and caresses of
Amour and her momentary power over the dog, and because she had
slept her fill, and passed the night without a man, and because of
the Trinity, according to dim recollections of her childhood, and
because of the sparkling sunny day, which it so seldom befalls her
to see.

All the night guests have already gone their ways. The most
business-like, quiet and workaday hour is coming on.

They are drinking coffee in the room of the proprietress. The
company consists of five people. The proprietress herself, in
whose name the house is registered, is Anna Markovna. She is about
sixty. She is very small of stature, but dumpy: she may be
visualized by imagining, from the bottom up, three soft,
gelatinous globes--large, medium and small, pressed into each
other without any interstices; this--her skirt, torso and head.