These people seemed happy and contented with their lot. Not one of them could read or write much, the old woman not at all. They cultivated berries for market as well as carried on the milk business; and when we rose to go, they entreated us to come out on their plot of land and see whether some could not be found. To their grief, only a few small cherries were to be discovered,--it was September,--and these they forced upon us. As we had hurt their feelings by leaving money on the table to pay for the cream, we accepted the cherries by way of compromise. The old woman chatted freely in her garden. She had been a serf, and, in her opinion, things were not much changed for the better, except in one respect. All the people in this village had been crown serfs, it seemed. The lot of the crown serfs was easier in every way than that of the ordinary private serfs, so that the emancipation only put a definite name to the practical freedom which they already enjoyed, and added a few minor privileges, with the ownership of a somewhat larger allotment of land than the serfs of the nobility received. I knew this: she was hardly capable of giving me so complete a summary of their condition. But--it was the usual _but_, I found--they had to work much harder now than before, in order to live. The only real improvement which she could think of, on the inspiration of the moment, was, that a certain irascible crown official, who had had charge of them in the olden days, and whose name she mentioned, who had been in the habit of distributing beatings with a lavish hand whenever the serfs displeased him or obeyed reluctantly, had been obliged to restrain his temper after the emancipation. "Nowadays, there is no one to order us about like that, or to thrash us," she remarked. We found our fuddled old peasant guide hanging about for "tea-money," when we bade farewell to my friend Domna, who, with her family, offered us her hand at parting. He was not too thoroughly soaked with "tea" already not to be able to draw the inference that our long stay with the milkwoman indicated pleasure, and he intimated that the introduction fee ought to be in proportion to our enjoyment. We responded so cheerfully to this demand that he immediately discovered the existence of a dozen historical monuments and points of interest in the tiny village, all invented on the spot; and when we dismissed him peremptorily, he took great care to impress his name and the position of his hut on our memories, for future use.