"I'm sure you'd like me to put on the samovar?" she asked.
"Oh, don't bother; call Aksinia, and let her do it."
Katerina Lvovna slipped her feet into her shoes and ran out of the room. It was more than half an hour before the returned. During that time she had blown the charcoal into a glow in the samovar and had quickly fluttered up to Sergei in the gallery.
"Remain here," she whispered.
"How long?" asked Sergei also in a whisper.
"Oh, how stupid you are! Stay here, till I call you."
And Katerina Lvovna hid him again in the same place.
From where he was in the gallery Sergei could hear everything that happened in the bedroom. He heard the door slam when Katerina Lvovna again went back to her husband. He could hear every word that was said.
"What have you been doing all this time," Zinovey Boirsych asked his wife.
"I have been getting the samovar to boil," she answered quietly.
There was a pause. Sergei could hear Zinovey Borisych hang his coat on the pegs. Then he washed, snorting and splashing the water about;
