“Oh, the naughty darling!” the nurse muttered to herself as she dragged him back on to the veranda. The child looked about him with the keen, observant glance of a “grown-up” who is debating how best a morning can be spent. Not a trifle, not a circumstance, escaped the child’s inquisitive attention, so that insensibly the picture of his home life engraved itself upon his mind, and his sensitive intellect nourished itself on living examples, and involuntarily modelled its programme of life on the life which surrounded it. Never at any time could it be said that the _morning_ was wasted in the Oblomovs’ establishment. The sound of knives in the kitchen, as they minced cutlets and vegetables, reached even to the village; while from the servants’ quarters came the hum of a spindle, coupled with the thin, low voice of an old woman--but a voice so low that with difficulty could one distinguish whether she were weeping, or whether she were merely improvising to herself a mournful “song without words.” Also, on Antip returning with the watercart, there would advance to meet it, with pails, cans, and pitchers, a number of maidservants and grooms, while from the storehouse an old woman would produce a vessel of meal and a pile of eggs, and carry them to the kitchen. There, on the cook suddenly throwing some water out of the window, the cat Arapka--which, with eyes fixed upon the view, had spent the morning in agitating the tip of her tail and licking herself--came in for a splashing. The head of the family, too, was not idle, for he spent the morning in sitting by the window and following with his eyes everything which took place in the courtyard. “Hi, Ignashka, what have you there, you rascal?” he cried to a man who happened to cross the open space. “Some knives to be sharpened in the scullery,” the man replied, without looking at his master. “Very well, then. Mind you sharpen them properly.” Next, the master stopped one of the maidservants. “Where are _you_ going?” he inquired. “To the cellar to get some milk for the table,” she replied, shading her eyes with her hand.