hem very
exquisitely, and with great taste; so that after a month the hat
specialty stores began to buy her work. And, what is most amazing, she
had taken only two lessons in all from a specialist, while the rest she
learned through a self-instructor, guiding herself only by the drawings
supplemental to it. She did not contrive to make more than a rouble's
worth of flowers in a week; but this money was her pride, and for the
very first half-rouble that she made she bought Lichonin a mouthpiece
for smoking.

Several years later Lichonin confessed to himself at soul, with regret
and with a quiet melancholy, that this period of time was the most
quiet, peaceful and comfortable one of all his life in the university
and as a lawyer. This unwieldy, clumsy, perhaps even stupid Liubka,
possessed some instinctive domesticity, some imperceptible ability of
creating a bright and easy quietude around her. It was precisely she
who attained the fact that Lichonin's quarters very soon became a
charming, quiet centre; where all the comrades of Lichonin, who, as
well as the majority of the students of that time, were forced to
sustain a bitter struggle with the harsh conditions of life, felt
somehow at ease, as though in a family; and rested at soul after heavy
tribulations, need, and starvation. Lichonin recalled with grateful
sadness her friendly complaisance, her modest and attentive silence, on
those evenings around the samovar, when so much had been spoken, argued
and dreamt.

In learning, things went with great difficulty. All these self-styled
cultivators, collectively and separately, spoke of the fact that the
education of the human mind, and the upbringing of the human soul must
flow out of individual motives; but in reality they stuffed Liubka with
just that which seemed to them the most necessary and indispensable,
and tried to overcome together with her those scientific obstacles,
which, without any loss, might have been left aside.

Thus, for example, Lichonin did not want, under any conditions, to
become reconciled, in teaching her arithmetic, to her queer, barbarous,
savage, or, more correctly, childish, primitive method of counting. She
counted exclusively in ones, twos, threes and fives. Thus, for example,
twelve to her was two times two threes; nineteen--three fives and two
twos; and, it must be said, that through her system she with the
rapidity of a counting board operated almost up to a hundred. To go
further sh