United States or Mauritius ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
To-day was a holiday, to-morrow they would harvest the rye and carry the hay, and then Sunday a holiday again; every day there were mutterings of distant thunder. It was misty and looked like rain, and, gazing now at the fields, everyone thought, God grant we get the harvest in in time; and everyone felt gay and joyful and anxious at heart. "Mowers ask a high price nowadays," said Praskovya.
"He has never spoken a word of that affair to me," Razumihin answered cautiously. "But I did hear something from Praskovya Pavlovna herself, though she is by no means a gossip. And what I heard certainly was rather strange." "And what did you hear?" both the ladies asked at once. "Well, nothing very special.
Praskovya Mikhaylovna did not at first believe that he was asking seriously, and looked inquiringly into his eyes. 'Some of them do. One of them is a splendid girl the butcher's daughter such a good kind girl! If I were a clever woman I ought, of course, with the connexions Papa had, to be able to get an appointment for my son-in-law.
I must briefly recall, too, the anonymous letter of which she had spoken to Praskovya Ivanovna with so much irritation, though I think she said nothing of the latter part of it. Yet it perhaps contained the explanation of the possibility of the terrible question with which she suddenly addressed her son.
He flew up to Liza, who was smiling gaily, to take her proffered hand, "and I observe that my honoured friend Praskovya Ivanovna has not forgotten her 'professor, and actually isn't cross with him, as she always used to be in Switzerland. But how are your legs, here, Praskovya Ivanovna, and were the Swiss doctors right when at the consultation they prescribed your native air? What? Fomentations?
The schoolboys were not afraid of him, old people called him "young man," ladies preferred dancing with him to listening to his long arguments, and he would have given a great deal to be ten years older. From the garden they went on to the Shelestovs' farm. There they stopped at the gate and asked the bailiff's wife, Praskovya, to bring some new milk.
Suddenly her door opened softly and her old nurse, Praskovya Savishna, who hardly ever came to that room as the old prince had forbidden it, appeared on the threshold with a shawl round her head. "I've come to sit with you a bit, Masha," said the nurse, "and here I've brought the prince's wedding candles to light before his saint, my angel," she said with a sigh. "Oh, nurse, I'm so glad!"
And Praskovya pointed to the corner where a white kitten, thin as a match, lay curled up asleep beside a broom. "Why is it no good?" asked Pyotr Demyanitch. "It's young yet, and foolish. It's not two months old yet." "H'm. . . . Then it must be trained. It had much better be learning instead of lying there." Saying this, Pyotr Demyanitch sighed with a careworn air and went out of the kitchen.
The kitten raised his head, looked lazily after him, and shut his eyes again. The kitten lay awake thinking. Of what? His thoughts were of the nature of day-dreams. His feline imagination pictured something like the Arabian desert, over which flitted shadows closely resembling Praskovya, the stove, the broom.
"I had heard something of anonymous letters here already," said Pyotr Stepanovitch, growing suddenly more lively, "and I'll find out the writers of them, you may be sure." "But you can't imagine the intrigues that have been got up here. They have even been pestering our poor Praskovya Ivanovna, and what reason can they have for worrying her?
Word Of The Day