On returning home they walked side by side with rapt
faces, an agreeable smell emanating from both of them and her silk
dress rustling pleasantly. At home they drank tea with milk-bread and
various jams, and then ate pie. Every day at noontime there was an
appetising odour in the yard and outside the gate of cabbage soup,
roast mutton, or duck; and, on fast days, of fish. You couldn't pass
the gate without being seized by an acute desire to eat. The samovar
was always boiling on the office table, and customers were treated to
tea and biscuits. Once a week the married couple went to the baths and
returned with red faces, walking side by side.
"We are getting along very well, thank God," said Olenka to her
friends. "God grant that all should live as well as Vasichka and I."
When Pustovalov went to the government of Mogilev to buy wood, she was
dreadfully homesick for him, did not sleep nights, and cried.
Sometimes the veterinary surgeon of the regiment, Smirnov, a young man
who lodged in the wing of her house, came to see her evenings. He
related incidents, or they played cards together. This distracted her.
The most interesting of his stories were those of his own life.
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