noon
After tea -- during the summer -- the children went to the big palisade , which ran down to a ravine , whose bottom always looked dark and damp , filling them with terror . The children were not allowed to go even to the edge of the ravine , and this inspired in them a fear of it . In winter , from tea time to dinner , they played in the house when it was very cold outside , or went out in the yard to slide down the big ice hill . They had dinner at noon , `` in Russian style , '' as Mayakin said . At first a big bowl of fat , sour cabbage soup was served with rye biscuits in , but without meat , then the same soup was eaten with meat cut into small pieces ; then they ate roast meat -- pork , goose , veal or rennet , with gruel -- then again a bowl of soup with vermicelli , and all this was usually followed by dessert . They drank kvass made of red bilberries , juniper-berries , or of bread -- Antonina Ivanovna always carried a stock of different kinds of kvass . They ate in silence , only now and then uttering a sigh of fatigue ; the children each ate out of a separate bowl , the adults eating out of one bowl .