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She can read and write; in their business it's of use. I suppose he liked her. 'And have you known her long? 'Yes. I used to go to her master's. Their house isn't far from here. 'And do you know the footman Petrushka? 'Piotr Vassilyevitch? Of course, I knew him. 'Where is he now? 'He was sent for a soldier. We were silent for a while. 'She doesn't seem well? I asked Yermolai at last.
Then he added to himself, with the pride of the new scepticism he had learnt from the factory hands: "There is no such thing; only women believe in such things. It was some drunken woman." Petrushka walked quickly back to the edge of the wood, where he had left his cart, and drove home. The next day was Sunday, and Tatiana noticed that he was different moody, melancholy, and absent-minded.
Then a fortnight later, when the woods were carpeted and thick with lilies of the valley, Petrushka and Tatiana walked in the woods and picked the last white violets, and later again they sought the alleys of the landlord's property, where the lilac bushes were a mass of blossom and fragrance, and there they listened to the nightingale, the bird of spring.
Their aged host also thought they ought not to go, but he had already tried to persuade them to stay and had not been listened to. 'It's no use asking them again. Maybe my age makes me timid. They'll get there all right, and at least we shall get to bed in good time and without any fuss, he thought. Petrushka did not think of danger.
And indeed, Selifan had long been sitting with half-closed eyes, and hands which bestowed no encouragement upon his somnolent steeds save an occasional flicking of the reins against their flanks; whilst Petrushka had lost his cap, and was leaning backwards until his head had come to rest against Chichikov's knees a position which necessitated his being awakened with a cuff.
During that time Petrushka and Tatiana walked in the apple orchard in the evening and they talked to each other in the divinest of all languages, the language of first love, which is no language at all but a confused medley and murmur of broken phrases, whisperings, twitterings, pauses, and silences a language so wonderful that it cannot be put down into speech or words, although Shakespeare and the very great poets translate the spirit of it into music, and the great musicians catch the echo of it in their song.
She was, indeed, politely attentive to her guests as she always was, but Raisky noticed immediately that something was wrong with her after her visit to Vera. She found it hard to restrain her emotion, hardly touched the food, did not even look round when Petrushka smashed a pile of plates, and more than once broke off in the middle of a sentence.
But this lasted only for a little while, for presently Petrushka was transferred to the servants' quarters, a course which ought to have been adopted in the first instance.
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