“The room has not been done yet,” she said, ushering the visitors into a stuffy little drawing-room adorned with many ikons and pots of flowers.  “Oh, Mother of God!  Vassilisa, go and open the shutters anyway!  My little angel!  My little beauty!  I did not know that Olitchka had a boy like that!”

When she had calmed down and got over her first surprise Ivan Ivanitch asked to speak to her alone.  Yegorushka went into another room; there was a sewing-machine; in the window was a cage with a starling in it, and there were as many ikons and flowers as in the drawing-room.  Near the machine stood a little girl with a sunburnt face and chubby cheeks like Tit’s, and a clean cotton dress.  She stared at Yegorushka without blinking, and apparently felt very awkward.  Yegorushka looked at her and after a pause asked: 

“What’s your name?”

The little girl moved her lips, looked as if she were going to cry, and answered softly: 

“Atka. . . .”

This meant Katka.

“He will live with you,” Ivan Ivanitch was whispering in the drawing-room, “if you will be so kind, and we will pay ten roubles a month for his keep.  He is not a spoilt boy; he is quiet. . . .”

“I really don’t know what to say, Ivan Ivanitch!” Nastasya Petrovna sighed tearfully.  “Ten roubles a month is very good, but it is a dreadful thing to take another person’s child!  He may fall ill or something. . . .”

When Yegorushka was summoned back to the drawing-room Ivan Ivanitch was standing with his hat in his hands, saying good-bye.

“Well, let him stay with you now, then,” he said.  “Good-bye!  You stay, Yegor!” he said, addressing his nephew.  “Don’t be troublesome; mind you obey Nastasya Petrovna. . . .  Good-bye; I am coming again to-morrow.”

And he went away.  Nastasya once more embraced Yegorushka, called him a little angel, and with a tear-stained face began preparing for dinner.  Three minutes later Yegorushka was sitting beside her, answering her endless questions and eating hot savoury cabbage soup.

In the evening he sat again at the same table and, resting his head on his hand, listened to Nastasya Petrovna.  Alternately laughing and crying, she talked of his mother’s young days, her own marriage, her children. . . .  A cricket chirruped in the stove, and there was a faint humming from the burner of the lamp.  Nastasya Petrovna talked in a low voice, and was continually dropping her thimble in her excitement; and Katka her granddaughter, crawled under the table after it and each time sat a long while under the table, probably examining Yegorushka’s feet; and Yegorushka listened, half dozing and looking at the old woman’s face, her wart with hairs on it, and the stains of tears, and he felt sad, very sad.  He was put to sleep on a chest and told that if he were hungry in the night he must go out into the little passage and take some chicken, put there under a plate in the window.