turned out to be either insulting, menacing, or senseless.
“Does my husband love me?” Nastasya Petrovna would inquire.
And the “Oracle” replied: “He loves you as a dog loves a stick.”
“How many children shall I have?”
“You are fated to die: the field must be cleared of weeds.”
Then Tikhon Ilitch would say: “Give it here. I’ll have a try.” And he would propound the question: “Ought I to start a lawsuit with a person whose name I won’t mention?”
But he, likewise, got nonsense for an answer: “Count the teeth in your mouth.”
One day Tikhon Ilitch, when he glanced into the kitchen, saw his wife beside the cradle in which lay the cook’s baby. A speckled chicken which was wandering along the window ledge, pecking and catching flies, tapped the glass with its beak; but she sat there on the sleeping-board and, while she rocked the cradle, sang in a pitiful quaver: