"We'll bring the orphans, too. Give us time. We'll call them together, all of them. We'll all be here and sit by you. You will be the brood-hen and we'll be your chicks. We'll have it all, if you behave. Now you are a naughty girl, because you went and took sick. That's the kind of mischief you're up to. My, my! Instead of being good and serving as an example for others, look what you're doing. That's bad, my dear, very bad." But no matter how hard Porfiry Vladimirych tried to cheer up his mother dear with banter, her strength waned from hour to hour. A messenger was dispatched to town to fetch a doctor, and since the patient persisted in moaning and calling the orphans, Yudushka in his own hand wrote a letter to Anninka and Lubinka in which he compared his and their conduct, called himself a Christian and them ungrateful. At night the doctor arrived, but it was too late. Arina Petrovna's fate was sealed. At about four o'clock in the morning the death agony set in and at six Porfiry Vladimirych was kneeling at his mother's bed wailing: "Mother dear! My friend! Give me your blessing!" But Arina Petrovna did not hear him. Her wide-open eyes stared dimly into space as if she were trying to understand something and could not. Yudushka, too, did not understand. He did not understand that the yawning grave was to carry off the last creature that linked him to the living world. With his usual bustle he delved into the mass of trifles and details that were incident upon the ceremonial of burial. He had requiems chanted, ordered memorial masses for the future, discussed matters with the priest, hurried from room to room with his shambling gait. Every now and then he peeped into the dining-room where the deceased lay, crossed himself, lifted his hands heavenward, and late at night stole quietly to the door to listen to the sexton's monotonous reading of the Psalms. He was pleasantly surprised that his expenses upon the occasions would be very slight, for Arina Petrovna long before her death had put away a sum of money for her burial and itemized in detail the various expenditures. Having buried his mother, Porfiry Vladimirych at once began to familiarize himself with her effects. Examining the papers he found about a dozen various wills (in one of them she called him "undutiful"); but all of them had been written when Arina Petrovna was still the domineering, despotic mistress, and were incomplete--in the form of tentative drafts.