In the night snow had fallen, and when Iván Petróvich had driven to church the snow had not yet disappeared, but was soft; now, though there was no sun, it was all melted from the moisture, and on the highway, on which he had to travel for three versts before turning into Chirakóvo, the snow was white only in last year's grass, which grew in parallel lines along the ruts; but on the black road the horses splashed through the viscous mud. The good, well-fed, large horses of his own stud had no difficulty in pulling the carriage, and it just rolled over the grass, where it left black marks, and over the mud, without being at all detained. Iván Petróvich was having pleasant reveries; he was thinking of his home, his wife, and his daughter. "Mánya will meet me at the porch, and with delight. She will see such holiness in me! She is a strange, sweet girl, but she takes everything too much to heart. The rôle of importance and of knowing everything that is going on in this world, which I must play before her, is getting to be too serious and ridiculous. If she knew that I am afraid of her!" he thought. "Well, Káto," (his wife) "will no doubt be in good humour to-day, she will purposely be in good humour, and we shall have a fine day. It will not be as it was last week on account of the Próshkin women. What a remarkable creature! How afraid of her I am! What is to be done? She does not like it herself." And he recalled a famous anecdote about a calf. A proprietor, having quarrelled with his wife, was sitting at a window, when he saw a frisky calf: "I should like to get you married!" he said. And Iván Petróvich smiled again, according to his custom solving every difficulty and every perplexity by a joke, which generally was directed against himself. At the third verst, near a chapel, the outrider bore to the left, into a cross-road, and the coachman shouted to him for having turned in so abruptly that the centre horses were struck by the shaft; and the carriage almost glided all the way down-hill. Before reaching the house, the outrider looked back at the coachman and pointed to something; the coachman looked back at the lackey, and indicated something to him. And all of them looked in the same direction. "What are you looking at?" asked Iván Petróvich. "Geese," said Míshka. "Where?" Though he strained his vision, he could not see them. "There they are. There is the forest, and there is the cloud, so be pleased to look between the two." Iván Petróvich could not see anything. "It is time for them. Why, it is less than a week to Annunciation." "That's so." "Well, go on!"