Next day Stepan Vladimirych waited the entire morning for his brothers, but they did not arrive. Finally, about eleven o'clock, the village clerk brought the two promised custards and reported that the brothers had just finished breakfast and were closeted with Arina Petrovna in her bedroom. CHAPTER IV Arina Petrovna received her sons solemnly, weighed down by grief. Two maids supported her under the armpits. Her grey locks streamed out from under her cap, her head drooped, and shook from side to side, and her limbs seemed hardly able to support her. She always liked to play the part of a venerable, careworn mother before her children, moving with difficulty and getting her maids to assist her. Simple Simon called such solemn receptions high mass, herself a bishop, and the maids, Polka and Yulka, mace-bearers. As it was late at night the interview was almost a silent one. Without saying a word she gave her sons her hand to kiss; kissed them in turn, and made the sign of the cross over them; and when Porfiry Vladimirych made it clear that he would gladly spend the rest of the night with "mother dear," she merely waved her hand and said: "Come now. Take a rest, you must be tired after the journey. This is not the time for discussion. We shall talk to-morrow." Next morning the two sons went to kiss papa's hand, but papa refused his hand. He lay on his bed with closed eyes, and when they entered he cried out: "Have you come to judge the toll-gatherer? Get out, Pharisees! Get out!" But in spite of this reception, Porfiry Vladimirych emerged from papa's room agitated and with tears on his eyelids, while Pavel Vladimirych, like "the heartless dolt" that he was, merely picked his nose. "He is very weak, mother dear, very weak!" exclaimed Porfiry Vladimirych, throwing himself on his mother's breast. "Is it so bad?" "Yes, very bad. He won't live much longer." "Oh, well, it isn't as bad as that." "No, dear, no. And although your life has never been too joyful, yet as I think how Fate deals you so many blows at once, upon my word, I wonder where you get the strength to bear up under it all." "Well, my friend, the strength comes if such is the Lord's will. You know what it says in the Scriptures: 'Bear one another's burdens.' It seems that our Heavenly Father has chosen me to bear the burdens of my family." Arina Petrovna shut her eyes, so delightful was this vision of the family finding their tables covered for them and of her toiling for them and bearing their burdens.