Lavretsky also went through the village. The women looked at him from the door-ways of their cottages, each resting her cheek upon her hand. The men bowed low from afar, the children ran Out of sight, the dogs barked away at their ease. At last he felt hungry, but he did not expect his cook and the other servants till the evening. The waggon bringing provisions from Lavriki had not yet arrived. It was necessary to have recourse to Anton. The old man immediately made his arrangements. He caught an ancient fowl, and killed and plucked it. Apraxia slowly squeezed and washed it, scrubbing it as if it had been linen for the wash, before putting it into the stewpan. When at last it was ready, Anton laid the table, placing beside the dish a three-footed plated salt-cellar, blackened with age, and a cut glass decanter, with a round glass stopper in its narrow neck. Then, in a kind of chant, he announced to Lavretsky that dinner was ready, and took his place behind his master's chair, a napkin wound around his right hand, and a kind of air of the past, like the odor of cypress-wood hanging about him. Lavretsky tasted the broth, and took the fowl out of it. The bird's skin was covered all over with round blisters, a thick tendon ran up each leg, and the flesh was as tough as wood, and had a flavor like that which pervades a laundry. After dinner Lavretsky said that he would take tea if-- "I will bring it in a moment," broke in the old man, and he kept his promise. A few pinches of tea were found rolled up in a scrap of red paper. Also a small, but very zealous and noisy little _samovar_[A] was discovered, and some sugar in minute pieces, which looked as if they had been all but melted away. Lavretsky drank his tea out of a large cup. From his earliest childhood he remembered this cup, on which playing cards were painted, and from which only visitors were allowed to drink; and now he drank from it, like a visitor. [Footnote A: Urn.]