ly. "It's a
dream, a glorious dream! Children, awaken me!"

He turned towards the table and said in a sobbing voice, shaking
his fists:

"Providence has heard us! Our saviour, our angel, has come! We are
saved! Children, down on your knees! on your knees!"

Madame Tchalikov and the little girls, except the youngest one,
began for some reason rapidly clearing the table.

"You wrote that your wife was very ill," said Anna Akimovna, and
she felt ashamed and annoyed. "I am not going to give them the
fifteen hundred," she thought.

"Here she is, my wife," said Tchalikov in a thin feminine voice,
as though his tears had gone to his head. "Here she is, unhappy
creature! With one foot in the grave! But we do not complain, madam.
Better death than such a life. Better die, unhappy woman!"

"Why is he playing these antics?" thought Anna Akimovna with
annoyance. "One can see at once he is used to dealing with merchants."

"Speak to me like a human being," she said. "I don't care for
farces.''

"Yes, madam; five bereaved children round their mother's coffin
with funeral candles--that's a farce? Eh?" said Tchalikov bitterly,
and turned away.

"Hold your tongue," whispered his wife, and she pulled at his sleeve.
"The place has not been tidied up, madam," she said, addressing
Anna Akimovna; "please excuse it . . . you know what it is where
there are children. A crowded hearth, but harmony."

"I am not going to give them the fifteen hundred," Anna Akimovna
thought again.

And to escape as soon as possible from these people and from the
sour smell, she brought out her purse and made up her mind to leave
them twenty-five roubles, not more; but she suddenly felt ashamed
that she had come so far and disturbed people for so little.

"If you give me paper and ink, I will write at once to a doctor who
is a friend of mine to come and see you," she said, flushing red.
"He is a very good doctor. And I will leave you some money for
medicine."

Madame Tchalikov was hastening to wipe the table.

"It's messy here! What are you doing?" hissed Tchalikov, looking
at her wrathfully. "Take her to the lodger's room! I make bold to
ask you, madam, to step into the lodger's room," he said, addressing
Anna Akimovna. "It's clean there."

"Osip Ilyitch told us not to go into his room!" said one of the
little girls, sternly.

But they had already led Anna Akimovna out of the kitchen, through
a narrow passage room between two bedsteads: it