It consisted of one fairly clean room partitioned into two. Savelyich began unpacking; I looked out of the narrow window. The melancholy steppe stretched before me. On one side I could see a few cottages; several hens strutted about the street. An old woman stood on the steps with a trough, calling to pigs that answered her with friendly grunting. And this was the place where I was doomed to spend my youth! I suddenly felt wretched; I left the window and went to bed without any supper in spite of Savelyich’s entreaties. He kept repeating in distress: “Merciful heavens, he won’t eat! What will my mistress say if the child is taken ill?”

Next morning I had just begun to dress when the door opened and a young officer, short, swarthy, with a plain but extremely lively face, walked in.

“Excuse me,” he said to me in French, “for coming without ceremony to make your acquaintance. Yesterday I heard of your arrival: I could not resist the desire to see at last a human face. You will understand this when you have lived here for a time.”

I guessed that this was the officer who had been dismissed from the Guards on account of a duel. We made friends at once. Shvabrin was very intelligent. His conversation was witty and entertaining. He described to me in a most amusing way the Commandant’s family, their friends, and the place to which fate had brought him. I was screaming with laughter when the old soldier, whom I had seen mending a uniform at the Commandant’s, came in and gave me Vasilisa Yegorovna’s invitation to dine with them. Shvabrin said he would go with me.

As we approached the Commandant’s house we saw in the square some twenty old garrison soldiers in three-cornered hats and with long queues. They were standing at attention. The Commandant, a tall, vigorous old man, wearing a nightcap and a cotton dressing gown, stood facing them. When he saw us, he came up, said a few kind words to me, and went on drilling his men. We stopped to look on, but he asked us to go to his house, promising to come soon after.

“There’s nothing here worth looking at,” he added. Vasilisa Yegorovna gave us a kind and homely welcome, treating me as though she had known me all my life. The old veteran and the maid Palasha were laying the table.

“My Ivan Kuzmich is late with his drilling today,” she said. “Palasha, call your master to dinner. And where is Masha?”

At that moment a girl of eighteen, with a rosy round face, came in; her fair hair was smoothly combed behind her ears which at that moment were burning. I did not particularly like her at the first glance. I was prejudiced against her: Shvabrin had described Masha, the Captain’s daughter, as quite stupid. Marya Ivanovna sat down in a corner and began sewing. Meanwhile cabbage soup was served. Not seeing her husband, Vasilisa Yegorovna sent Palasha a second time to call him.

“Tell your master that our guests are waiting and the soup will get cold; there is always time for drilling, thank heaven; he can shout to his heart’s content later on.”

The Captain soon appeared, accompanied by the one-eyed old man.

“What has come over you, my dear?” his wife said to him. “Dinner was served ages ago, and you wouldn’t come.”

“But I was busy drilling soldiers, Vasilisa Yegorovna, let me tell you.”

“Come, come,” his wife retorted, “all this drilling is mere pretense—your soldiers don’t learn anything and you are no good at it either. You had much better sit at home and say your prayers.