“I,” says she, “am a soldier’s wife. It is now seven months since they sent my husband away off, and no tidings. I lived out as cook; the baby was born; no one cared to keep me with a child. This is the third month that I have been struggling along without a place. I ate up all I had. I wanted to engage as a wet-nurse—no one would take me—I am too thin, they say. I have just been to the merchant’s wife, where lives our bábotchka,[1] and so they promised to take us in. I thought this was the end of it. But she told me to come next week. And she lives a long way off. I got tired out; and it tired him, too, my heart’s darling. Fortunately, our landlady takes pity on us for the sake of Christ, and gives us a room, else I don’t know how I should manage to get along.”
Avdyéitch sighed, and said, “Haven’t you any warm clothes?”
“Now is the time, friend, to wear warm clothes; but yesterday I pawned my last shawl for a twenty-kopek piece.”[2]
The woman came to the bed, and took the child; and Avdyéitch rose, went to the little wall, and succeeded in finding an old coat.
“Na!” says he: “it is a poor thing, yet you may turn it to some use.”
The woman looked at the coat, looked at the old man; she took the coat, and burst into tears: and Avdyéitch turned away his head; crawling under the bed, he pushed out a little trunk, rummaged in it, and sat down opposite the woman.
And the woman said, “May Christ bless you, diédushka![3] He must have sent me himself to your
