"I am happy! I am very, very happy!

"
There was a note of surprise in her voice as though it seemed impossible to her that she should be
happy. It was the first time in my life that I had seen her so gay. She even looked handsome. Her profile
was not good, her nose and mouth somehow protruded and made her look as if she was always
blowing, but she had beautiful, dark eyes, a pale, very delicate complexion, and a touching expression of
kindness and sadness, and when she spoke she seemed very charming and even beautiful. Both she and
I took after our mother; we were broad-shouldered, strong, and sturdy, but her paleness was a sign of
sickness, she often coughed, and in her eyes I often noticed the expression common to people who are
ill, but who for some reason conceal it. In her present cheerfulness there was something childish and
naïve, as though all the joy which had been suppressed and dulled during our childhood by a strict
upbringing, had suddenly awakened in her soul and rushed out into freedom.
But when evening came and the fly was brought round, my sister became very quiet and subdued, and
sat in the fly as though it were a prison-van.
Soon they were all gone. The noise of the fly died away.... I remembered that Aniuta Blagovo had said
not a single word to me all day.
"A wonderful girl!" I thought "A wonderful girl."
Lent came and every day we had Lenten dishes. I was greatly depressed by my idleness and the
uncertainty of my position, and, slothful, hungry, dissatisfied with myself, I wandered over the estate
and only waited for an energetic mood to leave the place.
Once in the afternoon when Radish was sitting in our wing, Dolyhikov entered unexpectedly, very
sunburnt, and grey with dust. He had been out on the line for three days and had come to Dubechnia on
a locomotive and walked over. While he waited for the carriage which he had ordered to come out to
meet him he went over the estate with his bailiff, giving orders in a loud voice, and then for a whole
hour he sat in our wing and wrote letters. When telegrams came through for him, he himself tapped out
the answers, while we stood there stiff and silent.
"What a mess!" he said, looking angrily through the accounts. "I shall transfer the office to the station in
a fortnight and I don't know what I shall do with you then."
"I've done my best, sir," said Cheprakov.
"Quite so. I can see what your best is. You can only draw your wages." The engineer looked at me and
went on. "You rely on getting introductions to make a career for yourself with as little trouble as
possible. Well, I don't care about introductions. Nobody helped me. Before I had this line, I was an
engine-driver. I worked in Belgium as an ordinary lubricator. And what are you doing here, Panteley?"
he asked, turning to Radish. "Going out drinking?"
For some reason or other he called all simple people Panteley, while he despised men like Cheprakov
and myself, and called us drunkards, beasts, canaille. As a rule he was hard on petty officials, and paid
and dismissed them ruthlessly without any explanation.
At last the carriage came for him. When he left he promised to dismiss us all in a fortnight; called the
bailiff a fool, stretched himself out comfortably in the carriage, and drove away.
"Andrey Ivanich," I said to Radish, "will you take me on as a labourer?"
"What! Why?"
We went together toward the town, and when the station and the farm were far behind us, I asked:
"Andrey Ivanich, why did you come to Dubechnia?"
"Firstly because some of my men are working on the line, and secondly to pay interest to Mrs.
Cheprakov. I borrowed fifty roubles from her last summer, and now I pay her one rouble a month."
The decorator stopped and took hold of my coat.
"Misail Alereich, my friend," he went on, "I take it that if a common