The brothers used to sing in the church choir; sometimes they used to sing softly over their work. The elder would begin in a baritone: "The ring, which was the maiden's heart, I cast from me into the sea." And the younger would join with his tenor: "And I with that very ring Her earthly joy did ruin." The mistress would murmur from the nursery: "Have you gone out of your minds? Baby is asleep," or: "How can you, Vassia, a married man, be singing about girls? Besides, the bell will ring for vespers in a minute." "What's the matter now? We are only singing a church tune." But the mistress intimated that it was out of place to sing church tunes here, there, and everywhere. Besides, and she pointed eloquently to the little door. "We shall have to change our quarters, or the devil knows what will become of us," said the master. He said just as often that he must get another table, and he said it for three years in succession. When I listened to my employers talking about people, I was always reminded of the boot-shop. They used to talk in the same way there. It was evident to me that my present masters also thought themselves better than any one in the town. They knew the rules of correct conduct to the minutest detail, and, guided by these rules, which were not at all clear to me, they judged others pitilessly and unsparingly. This sitting in judgment aroused in me a ferocious resentment and anger against the laws of my employers, and the breaking of those laws became a source of pleasure to me. I had a lot of work to do. I fulfilled all the duties of a housemaid, washed the kitchen over on Wednesday, cleaning the samovar and all the copper vessels, and on Saturday cleaned the floor of the rest of the house and both staircases. I had to chop and bring in the wood for the stoves, wash up, prepare vegetables for cooking, and go marketing with the mistress, carrying her basket of purchases after her, besides running errands to the shops and to the chemist. My real mistress, grandmother's sister, a noisy, indomitable, implacably fierce old woman, rose early at six o'clock, and after washing herself in a hurry, knelt before the icon with only her chemise on, and complained long to God about her life, her children, and her daughter-in-law. "Lord," she would exclaim, with tears in her voice, pressing her two first fingers and her thumbs against her forehead--"Lord, I ask nothing, I want nothing; only give me rest and peace, Lord, by Thy power!"