“To what place does he carry them, and what is he like, and where does he live?” asked the child; whereupon the mother gave full rein to her unbridled fancy. As she did so the child listened with blinking eyes; until at length, on sleep completely overcoming him, the nurse approached, took him from his mother’s lap, and bore him to bed, with his head hanging over her shoulder. “Another day is over, praise be to God!” said the inmates of Oblomovka as, yawning, they made the sign of the cross and then retired to rest. “Well spent it has been, and God send that to-morrow be like it. Glory, O Lord, to Thee this night! Glory, O Lord, to Thee!” Oblomov dreamed a second dream. On a long winter’s evening he was pressing close to his nurse, and she was whispering of some unknown country where neither cold nor darkness were known, and where miracles took place, and where rivers ran honey and milk, and where no one did anything the year round, and where only good boys like Ilya Ilyitch himself walked day by day in company with maidens such as neither tongue nor pen could hope to describe. Also (the nurse said) there dwelt there a kind witch who sometimes revealed herself to mortals in the shape of a pikefish; and this witch singled out as her especial favourite a quiet, inoffensive boor who formerly had been the butt of his fellows, and, for some unknown reason, heaped him with her bounty, so that always he possessed plenty to eat, and clothes ever ready to wear, and ended by marrying a marvellous beauty whose name was Militrissa Kirbitievna.