“I won’t,” he says, holding his pockets.

Vasya begins to get cross, and abuses them, calling them idiots and blockheads.

“I’ll put down a stake for you, Vasya!” says Sonya.  “Sit down.”  He sits down and lays two cards before him.  Anya begins counting the numbers.

“I’ve dropped a kopeck!” Grisha announces suddenly, in an agitated voice.  “Wait!”

He takes the lamp, and creeps under the table to look for the kopeck.  They clutch at nutshells and all sorts of nastiness, knock their heads together, but do not find the kopeck.  They begin looking again, and look till Vasya takes the lamp out of Grisha’s hands and puts it in its place.  Grisha goes on looking in the dark.  But at last the kopeck is found.  The players sit down at the table and mean to go on playing.

“Sonya is asleep!” Alyosha announces.

Sonya, with her curly head lying on her arms, is in a sweet, sound, tranquil sleep, as though she had been asleep for an hour.  She has fallen asleep by accident, while the others were looking for the kopeck.

“Come along, lie on mamma’s bed!” says Anya, leading her away from the table.  “Come along!”

They all troop out with her, and five minutes later mamma’s bed presents a curious spectacle.  Sonya is asleep.  Alyosha is snoring beside her.  With their heads to the others’ feet, sleep Grisha and Anya.  The cook’s son, Andrey too, has managed to snuggle in beside them.  Near them lie the kopecks, that have lost their power till the next game.  Good-night!

THE RUNAWAY

It had been a long business.  At first Pashka had walked with his mother in the rain, at one time across a mown field, then by forest paths, where the yellow leaves stuck to his boots; he had walked until it was daylight.  Then he had stood for two hours in the dark passage, waiting for the door to open.  It was not so cold and damp in the passage as in the yard, but with the high wind spurts of rain flew in even there.  When the passage gradually became packed with people Pashka, squeezed among them, leaned his face against somebody’s sheepskin which smelt strongly of salt fish, and sank into a doze.  But at last the bolt clicked, the door flew open, and Pashka and his mother went into the waiting-room.  All the patients sat on benches without stirring or speaking.  Pashka looked round at them, and he too was silent, though he was seeing a great deal that was strange and funny.  Only once, when a lad came into the waiting-room hopping on one leg, Pashka longed to hop too; he nudged his mother’s elbow, giggled in his sleeve, and said:  “Look, mammy, a sparrow.”

“Hush, child, hush!” said his mother.

A sleepy-looking hospital assistant appeared at the little window.

“Come and be registered!” he boomed out.

All of them, including the funny lad who hopped, filed up to the window.  The assistant asked each one his name, and his father’s name, where he lived, how long he had been ill, and so on.  From his mother’s answers, Pashka learned that his name was not Pashka, but Pavel Galaktionov, that he was seven years old, that he could not read or write, and that he had been ill ever since Easter.