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Varvara Petrovna looked at him searchingly and did not question him. The carriage was got ready instantly. Varvara Petrovna set off with Dasha. They say that she kept crossing herself on the journey. In Nikolay Vsyevolodovitch's wing of the house all the doors were open and he was nowhere to be seen. "Wouldn't he be upstairs?" Fomushka ventured.
The letter of the day before: "If he decides to pay you a visit this morning, I think the most dignified thing would be not to receive him. That's what I think about it; I don't know what you think. To-day's, the last: "I feel sure that you're in a regular litter and clouds of tobacco smoke. I'm sending you Marya and Fomushka. They'll tidy you up in half an hour.
He found his friend in the big drawing-room on the little sofa in the recess, before a little marble table with a pencil and paper in her hands. Fomushka, with a yard measure, was measuring the height of the galleries and the windows, while Varvara Petrovna herself was writing down the numbers and making notes on the margin.
Foma succeeded easily in gaining knowledge, almost without any effort, and soon he was reading the first psalm of the first section of the psalter: "Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly." "That's it, my darling! So, Fomushka, that's right!" chimed in his aunt with emotion, enraptured by his progress. "You're a fine fellow, Foma!"
The whole novel is worth reading, apart from its revolutionary interest, apart from the proclamation of the Gospel according to Solomin, for the picture of that anachronistic pair of old lovers, Fomushka and Finushka.* "There are ponds in the steppes which never get putrid, though there's no stream through them, because they are fed by springs from the bottom.
Although, I'll tell you, even if there were twenty-five classes in your school, they could never teach you there anything save reading, writing and arithmetic. You may also learn some naughty things, but God protect you! I shall give you a terrible spanking if you do. If you smoke tobacco I'll cut your lips off." "Remember God, Fomushka," said the aunt. "See that you don't forget our Lord."
When she reached the empty house she had gone through all the rooms, accompanied by her faithful old butler, Alexey Yegorytch, and by Fomushka, a man who had seen much of life and was a specialist in decoration.
This old woman led him into a new world, hitherto unknown to him. The very first day, having put him to bed, she seated herself by his side, and, bending over the child, asked him: "Shall I tell you a story, Fomushka?" And after that Foma always fell asleep amid the velvet-like sounds of the old woman's voice, which painted before him a magic life.
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