She kissed Lavretsky's hand and stood still in the doorway awaiting his orders.

He positively could not recollect her name and did not even remember whether he had ever seen her.

Her name, it appeared, was Apraxya; forty years before, Glafira Petrovna had put her out of the master's house and ordered that she should be a poultry woman.

She said little, however; she seemed to have lost her senses from old age, and could only gaze at him obsequiously.

Besides these two old creatures and three pot-bellied children in long smocks, Anton's great-grandchildren, there was also living in the manor-house a one-armed peasant, who was exempted from servitude; he muttered like a woodcock and was of no use for anything.
Not much more useful was the decrepit dog who had saluted Lavretsky's return by its barking; he had been for ten years fastened up by a heavy chain, purchased at Glafira Petrovna's command, and was scarcely able to move and drag the weight of it.