We began to make vegetable beds in the garden.

I am at home now. Before the holiday I was in the Ostroumov clinic for two weeks, coughing up blood; the doctors determined an apical process in the lungs. I feel great, nothing hurts, nothing bothers me inside, but the doctors forbade me from drinking, moving, and talking; they told me to eat a lot, forbade me to work — and I feel a bit bored. I do nothing, feed the sparrows on hemp seeds and prune one rose a day. After my pruning, the roses bloom splendidly. I don’t do household chores.

As we got up early, when the sun rose, we had an early lunch: at twelve o’clock in the afternoon. Anton Pavlovich bought a bell and hung it in the estate on a high pole. Once a day, at exactly twelve o’clock in the afternoon, Frol, or someone else, was to strike twelve times, and the whole neighborhood, within a radius of six or seven versts, upon hearing the bell, would quit their work and sit down to lunch. At eleven o’clock in the morning, after Anton Pavlovich had had enough time to work and write, he would come into the dining-room and take a silent but meaningful look at his watch. His mother would at once jump up from behind the sewing-machine and start fussing: ‘Oh, dear me, Antosha is hungry! ’ The bell to the kitchen, which was in a separate room, started to rattle. Anyuta and Masha came running in, and preparations for lunch began.