The girl was a little slip of a thing, seventeen, but fair-skinned and pretty-looking, and like a lady in all her ways; and a decent dowry with her, five hundred roubles, a cow, a bed.⁠ ⁠… Well, the old lady⁠—it seemed as though she had known it was coming⁠—three days after the wedding, departed to the Heavenly Jerusalem where is neither sickness nor sighing. The young people gave her a good funeral and began their life together. For just six months they got on splendidly, and then all of a sudden another misfortune. It never rains but it pours: Vasya was summoned to the recruiting office to draw lots for the service. He was taken, poor chap, for a soldier, and not even granted exemption. They shaved his head and packed him off to Poland. It was God’s will; there was nothing to be done. When he said goodbye to his wife in the yard, he bore it all right; but as he glanced up at the hayloft and his pigeons for the last time, he burst out crying. It was pitiful to see him.

“At first Mashenka got her mother to stay with her, that she mightn’t be dull all alone; she stayed till the baby⁠—this very Kuzka here⁠—was born, and then she went off to Oboyan to another married daughter’s and left Mashenka alone with the baby. There were five peasants⁠—the carriers⁠—a drunken saucy lot; horses, too, and dray-carts to see to, and then the fence would be broken or the soot afire in the chimney⁠—jobs beyond a woman, and through our being neighbours, she got into the way of turning to me for every little thing.⁠ ⁠… Well, I’d go over, set things to rights, and give advice.⁠ ⁠… Naturally, not without going indoors, drinking a cup of tea and having a little chat with her. I was a young fellow, intellectual, and fond of talking on all sorts of subjects; she, too, was well-bred and educated. She was always neatly dressed, and in summer she walked out with a sunshade. Sometimes I would begin upon religion or politics with her, and she was flattered and would entertain me with tea and jam.⁠ ⁠… In a word, not to make a long story of it, I must tell you, old man, a year had not passed before the Evil One, the enemy of all mankind, confounded me. I began to notice that any day I didn’t go to see her, I seemed out of sorts and dull.