She felt depressed again, and was no longer glad that she had come, and the thought of the lucky man upon whom fifteen hundred roubles would drop from heaven no longer struck her as original and amusing.  To go to some Tchalikov or other, when at home a business worth a million was gradually going to pieces and being ruined, and the workpeople in the barracks were living worse than convicts, meant doing something silly and cheating her conscience.  Along the highroad and across the fields near it, workpeople from the neighbouring cotton and paper factories were walking towards the lights of the town.  There was the sound of talk and laughter in the frosty air.  Anna Akimovna looked at the women and young people, and she suddenly felt a longing for a plain rough life among a crowd.  She recalled vividly that far-away time when she used to be called Anyutka, when she was a little girl and used to lie under the same quilt with her mother, while a washerwoman who lodged with them used to wash clothes in the next room; while through the thin walls there came from the neighbouring flats sounds of laughter, swearing, children’s crying, the accordion, and the whirr of carpenters’ lathes and sewing-machines; while her father, Akim Ivanovitch, who was clever at almost every craft, would be soldering something near the stove, or drawing or planing, taking no notice whatever of the noise and stuffiness.  And she longed to wash, to iron, to run to the shop and the tavern as she used to do every day when she lived with her mother.  She ought to have been a work-girl and not the factory owner!  Her big house with its chandeliers and pictures; her footman Mishenka, with his glossy moustache and swallowtail coat; the devout and dignified Varvarushka, and smooth-tongued Agafyushka; and the young people of both sexes who came almost every day to ask her for money, and with whom she always for some reason felt guilty; and the clerks, the doctors, and the ladies who were charitable at her expense, who flattered her and secretly despised her for her humble origin—­ how wearisome and alien it all was to her!

Here was the railway crossing and the city gate; then came houses alternating with kitchen gardens; and at last the broad street where stood the renowned Gushtchin’s Buildings.  The street, usually quiet, was now on Christmas Eve full of life and movement.  The eating-houses and beer-shops were noisy.  If some one who did not belong to that quarter but lived in the centre of the town had driven through the street now, he would have noticed nothing but dirty, drunken, and abusive people; but Anna Akimovna, who had lived in those parts all her life, was constantly recognizing in the crowd her own father or mother or uncle.  Her father was a soft fluid character, a little fantastical, frivolous, and irresponsible.  He did not care for money, respectability, or power; he used to say that a working man had no time to keep the holy-days and go to church; and if it had not