With her daughter Arina Petrovna dealt as peremptorily as she had with her hated son. She bestowed "a bone" upon her too, in the shape of five thousand rubles and a wretched little village of thirty souls and a manor-house going with it, so dilapidated that the wind blew through the gaping paneless windows and there was not one sound board in the flooring. In two years the young couple had gone through the money, and the cornet took himself off, deserting his wife and two twin girls, Anninka and Lubinka. Three months later the mother died, and Arina Petrovna, willy-nilly, had to take the little orphans into her own house. She installed them in a side-wing and entrusted them to the care of Palashka, old and one-eyed. "The Lord's mercy is great," remarked Arina Petrovna. "The little orphans won't eat much of my bread, but they'll be a solace to me in my old age. God has given me two daughters instead of one." At the same time she wrote to her son, Porfiry Vladimirych: "Your dear sister died as she lived, indecently, and now her two children are hanging round my neck." What we are going to say may seem cynical, but we feel it our duty to state that the granting of the heritage to Stepan and Anna did not by any means impair Arina Petrovna's financial condition. On the contrary, in reducing the number of shareholders it contributed indirectly to the rounding out of the family estate. For Arina Petrovna was a woman of strict principles, and once having "thrown them a bone," she considered her obligations toward her unloved children completely and definitely settled. In regard to her grandchildren it never entered her mind that in due time she would have to part with something for them. All she cared for was to draw all the income possible from the small estate of her deceased daughter and deposit it in the Chamber of Trustees. "There I am," she would say, "laying by money for the orphans. For feeding and bringing them up I take nothing from them. For the bread they eat it is God who will pay me." As for the younger children, Porfiry and Pavel, they served in St. Petersburg, the former in a civil capacity, the latter in the army. Porfiry was married; Pavel was an old bachelor.