Between her and David, on the other hand, there existed a friendship—­a childish but warm if somewhat strange friendship.  They suited one another well:  sometimes for hours they would not exchange a word, but every one felt that they were enjoying themselves merely because they were together.  I have really never met another girl like her.  There was in her something questioning, yet decided—­something honest, and sad, and dear.  I never heard her say anything clever, and also nothing commonplace, and I have never seen anything more intelligent than her eyes.  When the breach between her family and mine came I began to see her seldom.  My father positively forbade my seeing the Latkins, and she never appeared at our house; but I used to meet her in the street, at church, and Little Black-Lip used to inspire me with the same feeling—­esteem, and even a sort of admiration, rather than pity.  She bore her misfortunes well.  “The girl is a stone,” the coarse Trankwillitatin once said of her.  But in truth one could not help sympathizing with her.  Her face wore a troubled, wearied expression, and her eyes grew deeper:  a burden beyond her strength was laid on her young shoulders.  David used to see her much oftener than I did.  My father troubled himself very little about him:  he knew that David never listened to him.  And Raissa used to appear from time to time at the gate between our garden and the street, and meet David there.  She did not chatter with David, but merely told him of some new loss or misfortune that had happened to them, and begged for his advice.

The after-consequences of Latkin’s paralysis were very strange:  his hands and feet became weak, but still he could use them.  Even his brain worked normally, but his tongue was confused and used to utter one word in the place of another:  you had to guess at what he really meant to say.  “Choo, choo, choo,” he would with difficulty stammer forth—­he always began with “Choo, choo, choo”—­“the scissors, the scissors,” but the scissors meant “bread.”  He hated my father with all the strength that was left him:  he ascribed his sufferings to my father’s curses, and called him sometimes “the butcher,” and sometimes the “jeweler.”  “Choo, choo, don’t you dare to go to the butcher, Wassilievna:”  by this name he called his daughter.  Every day he grew more exacting:  his needs increased; and how should his needs be satisfied? where get the money?  Sorrows soon make people old, but it was painful to hear these questions from the lips of a sixteen-year-old girl.

XIII.

I remember I happened to be present at her conversation with David by the hedge on the day her mother died.

“Mother died this morning,” first letting her dark, expressive eyes wander around and then fall on the ground.  “The cook has undertaken to buy a cheap coffin, but she is not to be trusted:  she may spend the money in drink.  You must come and look after her, David:  she is afraid of you.”