Behind her sat a red dog with pointed ears. Seeing the visitors, it ran to the wicket-gate and struck up a high-pitched bark—red dogs are all tenors.
'Who do you want?' shouted the woman, shielding her eyes from the sun with a hand.
'Good morning,' Uncle Ivan shouted back, waving his stick to keep off the red dog. 'Tell me, please, does Mrs. Toskunov live here?'
'She does! What do you want with her?'
Kuzmichov and Yegorushka went up to her, and she gave them a suspicious look. 'What do you want with her?' she repeated.
'Perhaps you are Mrs. Toskunov?'
'M right then, I am.'
'Very pleased to meet you. Your old friend Olga Knyazev sends her respects, see? This is her little son. And perhaps you remember me— her brother Ivan. We al come from N , you see. You were born in our to^ and you were married there.'
Silence ensued, and the stout woman stared blankly at Kuzmichov, as if not believing or understanding. But then she flushed all over and flung up her hands. Oats fell from her apron, tears sprang from her eyes. 'Olga!' she shrieked, panting with excitement. 'My darling, my darling! Heavens, why ^ I standing here like an idiot? My pretty little angel!' She embraced the boy, wet his face with her tears and broke do^ completely.
'Heavens!' She wrung her hands. 'Olga's little boy! Now that ii good news! And isn't he like his mother—her very image, he is. But why are you standing out in the yard? Do come inside.' Weeping, gasping, talking as she went, she hurried to the house, with the guests plodding after her. 'It's so untidy here.' She ushered the visitors into a stuffy parlour crammed with icons and pots of flowers. 'Oh, good- ness me! Vasilisa, at least go and open the shutters. The little angel— now, isn't he just lovely! I had no idea dear Olga had such a dear little boy.'
When she had calmed do^wn and got used to the visitors Kuzmichov asked to speak to her in private. The boy went into another room,
S.A.D. S.-5 containing a sewing-machine, a cage with a starling in the window, and just as many icons and flowers as the parlour. A little girl—sun- burnt, chubby-cheeked like Titus, wearing a clean little cotton frock —was standing stock-still near the sewing-machine. She looked at Yegorushka unblinkingly, obviously feeling very awkward. After gazing at her in silence for a moment he asked what her name was.
The little girl moved her lips, looking as if she was going to 'Atka,' she answered softly.
This meant 'Katka'.
'He'll live here, if you ^^ be so kind,' K^michov whispered in the parlour. 'And we'll pay you ten roubles a month. The boy isn't spoilt, he's a quiet lad.'
'I really don't know what to say, Mr. Kuzmichov,' sighed Nastasya plaintively. 'Ten roubles is good money, but I'm afraid of taking on someone else's child, see? He might fall ill or something.'
When they called the boy back into the parlour his Uncle Ivan had stood up and was saying good-bye, hat in hand. 'Very well then, let him stay with you now.' He t^roed to his nephew. 'Good-bye, Yego- rushka, you're to stay here. Mind you behave yourself and do as Mrs. Toskunov says. Good-bye then. I'll come again tomorrow.'
And off he went.
Nastasya embraced the boy again, calling him a little angel and began tearfully laying the table. Three minutes later Yegorushka was sitting next to her, answering her endles questions and eating rich, hot cabbage stew.
In the evening he was back at the same table, resting his head on his hand as he listened to Nastasya. Now laughing, now ^^ng, she talked of his mother's young days, her marriage, her children. A cricket chirped in the stove and the lamp b^roer faintly buzzed. The mistress of the house spoke in a low voice, occasionally dropping her thimble in her excitement, whereupon her granddaughter Katka would crawl under the table after it, always staying downwn there a long time and probably scrutinizing Yegorushka's feet. He listened, he dozed, and he examined the old woman's face, her wart with hairs on it, the tear stains. And he felt sad, very sad. They made him a bed on a trunk, saying that if he was hungry in the night he should go into the corridor and take some of the chicken under a bowl on the win- dow-sill.
Next morning Ivan Kuzmichov and Father Christopher came to say good-bye. Mrs. Toskunov was pleased to see them and was going to bring out the samovar, but Kuzmichov was in a great hurry and dismissed the idea with a gesture.
'We've no time for tea, sugar and the rest of it, we're just leaving.'
Before parting, all sat in silence for a minute. Nastasya gave a deep sigh, gazing with tearful eyes at the icons.
'Well, well,' began Ivan, getting up. 'So you'll be staying here.'
The businesslike reserve suddenly vanished from his face. 'Now, mind you study.' He was a little flushed and smiled sadly. 'Don't forget your mother and obey Mrs. Toskunov. You study wdl, boy, and I'll stand by you.'
He took a purse from his pocket, t^ed his back to the boy, bur- rowed in the small change for a while, found a ten-copeck piece and gave it to him.
Father Christopher sighed and unhurriedly blessed Yegorushka. 'In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Study, lad, work hard. Remember me in your prayers if I die. And here's ten copecks from me too.'
Yegorushka kissed his hand and burst into tears. Something inside him whispered that he would never see the old man again.
'I've already applied to the local high school,' Kuzmichov told Nas- tasya in a voice suggesting that there was a dead body laid out in the room. 'You must take him to the examination on the seventh of August. Well, good-bye and God bless you. Farewell, nephew.'
'You might have had a little tea,' groaned Nastasya.
Through the tears blinding his eyes the boy could not see Uncle Ivan and Father Christopher leave. He rushed to the window, but they were gone from the yard. The red hound had just barked, and was ^^^g back from the gate with an air of duty fulfilled. Not knowing why, the boy j^ped up and rushed from the house, and as he ran out of the gate Kuzmichov and Father Christopher—the first swinging his stick with the c^^ed handle and the second his staff—were just rounding the comer. Yegorushka felt that his entire stock of experi- ence had vanished with them like smoke. He sank exhaustedly on a bench, greeting the advent of his new and unknownwn life with bitter tears.
What kind of life would it be?
AN AWKWARD BUSINESS
Grbgory Ovchinnikov was a country doctor of about thirty-five, haggard and nervous. He was kno^ to his colleagues for his modest contributions to medical statistics and keen interest in 'social prob- lems'. One morning he was doing his ward rounds in his hospital, followed as usual by his assistant Michael S^^ovsky—an elderly medical orderly with a fleshy face, plastered-do^ greasy hair and a single ear-ring.
Barely had the doctor begun his rounds when a tr^mg matter aroused his acute suspicions-—his assistant's waistcoat was creased, and persistently rode up even though the man kept jerking and straighten- ing it. His shirt too was cr^pled and creased, and there was white fluff on his long black frock-coat, on his trousers, and even on his tie. The man had obviously slept in his clothes, and—to judge from his expresion as he tugged his waistcoat and adjusted his tie-—those clothes were too tight for him.
The doctor stared at him and grasped the situation. His asistant was not staggering, and he answered questions coherently, but his grim, blank face, his dim eyes, the shivering of his neck and hands, the dis- order of his dreu, and above all his intense efforts to control hi^rclf, together with his desire to conceal his condition—it all testified that he had just got up, had not slept properly and was still drunk, seriously drunk, on what he had taken the night before. He had an ex<cruaating hangover, he was in great distres, and he was obviously very ^moyed with himself.