Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VI).djvu/233

Rh exist. They used to regale him with tea at the drawing-room door, present him with a sheep-skin cap and a pair of green wash-leather mittens, and bid him God-speed. The Subotchevs' house was filled with house-serfs, as in the old serf days. The old man-servant Kalliopitch, clothed in a jerkin of extraordinarily stout cloth with a stand-up collar and tiny steel buttons, announced in a sing-song chant that 'dinner is on the table,' and dozed standing behind his mistress's chair, all quite in the old style. The sideboard was in his charge; he had the care of 'the various spices, cardamums and lemons,' and to the question, 'Hadn't he heard that all serfs had received their freedom?' he always responded, 'To be sure, folks would for ever be talking some such idle nonsense; that like enough there was freedom among the Turks, but he, thank God, had escaped all that.' A girl, Pufka, a dwarf, was kept for entertainment, and an old nurse, Vassilyevna, used to come in during dinner with a large dark kerchief on her head, and talk in a thick voice of all the news─of Napoleon, of the year 1812, of Antichrist, and white niggers; or else, her chin propped in her hand, in an attitude of woe, she would tell what she had dreamed and what it portended, and what fortune she had got from the cards. The Subotchevs' house itself