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Updated: May 14, 2025
Yakov Ivanitch was reading at the desk at that moment, his sister Aglaia, a tall lean old woman in a dark-blue dress and white kerchief, was praying with him. Yakov Ivanitch's daughter Dashutka, an ugly freckled girl of eighteen, was there, too, barefoot as usual, and wearing the dress in which she had at nightfall taken water to the cattle. "Glory to Thee Who hast shown us the light!"
She began snoring at once, but soon woke up and said, yawning: "You shouldn't burn a candle for nothing, Uncle Matvey." "It's my candle," answered Matvey; "I bought it with my own money." Dashutka turned over a little and fell asleep again.
He knew there was no deceiving anyone by this, but to move, to do something, to be active, was not as agonizing as to sit still and wait. He called Dashutka, and with her carried Matvey out. Aglaia stayed behind to clean up the kitchen. When Yakov and Dashutka turned back they were detained at the railway crossing by the barrier being let down.
On the morning of the Monday before Good Friday, Matvey heard from his room Dashutka say to Aglaia: "Uncle Matvey said, the other day, that there is no need to fast." Matvey remembered the whole conversation he had had the evening before with Dashutka, and he felt hurt all at once. "Girl, don't do wrong!" he said in a moaning voice, like a sick man.
A long goods train was passing, dragged by two engines, breathing heavily, and flinging puffs of crimson fire out of their funnels. The foremost engine uttered a piercing whistle at the crossing in sight of the station. "It's whistling, . . ." said Dashutka. The train had passed at last, and the signalman lifted the barrier without haste. "Is that you, Yakov Ivanitch?
Dashutka, who had no room of her own, lived in the same room behind the stove. A cricket chirped there always at night and mice ran in and out. Matvey lighted a candle and began reading a book which he had borrowed from the station policeman. While he was sitting over it the service ended, and they all went to bed. Dashutka lay down, too.
Aglaia and Dashutka were not in the room, they were both sitting behind the counter in the tea-room, spinning yarn in silence. Yakov Ivanitch crossed to his own room with a little lamp in his hand, and pulled from under the bed a little box in which he kept his money.
She said that Uncle Matvey and Aunt Aglaia quarrelled and almost fought every day over money, and that Uncle Matvey was rich, so much so that he had given someone "his Darling" nine hundred roubles. Dashutka was left alone in the tavern.
Avdotya's great-grandson Matvey had struggled from early childhood with all sorts of dreams and fancies and had been almost ruined by it; the other great-grandson, Yakov Ivanitch, was orthodox, but after his wife's death he gave up going to church and prayed at home. Following his example, his sister Aglaia had turned, too; she did not go to church herself, and did not let Dashutka go.
Matvey, hungry and melancholy, sat reading, or went up to the Dutch stove and slowly scrutinized the tiles which reminded him of the factory. Dashutka was asleep; then, waking up, she went to take water to the cattle. When she was getting water from the well the cord broke and the pail fell in.
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