out turning to him.

"From nine years old. I entered the factory in your uncle's time."

"That's a long while! My uncle and my father knew all the workpeople,
and I know hardly any of them. I had seen you before, but I did not
know your name was Pimenov."

Anna Akimovna felt a desire to justify herself before him, to pretend
that she had just given the money not seriously, but as a joke.

"Oh, this poverty," she sighed. "We give charity on holidays and
working days, and still there is no sense in it. I believe it is
useless to help such people as this Tchalikov."

"Of course it is useless," he agreed. "However much you give him,
he will drink it all away. And now the husband and wife will be
snatching it from one another and fighting all night," he added
with a laugh.

"Yes, one must admit that our philanthropy is useless, boring, and
absurd. But still, you must agree, one can't sit with one's hand
in one's lap; one must do something. What's to be done with the
Tchalikovs, for instance?"

She turned to Pimenov and stopped, expecting an answer from him;
he, too, stopped and slowly, without speaking, shrugged his shoulders.
Obviously he knew what to do with the Tchalikovs, but the treatment
would have been so coarse and inhuman that he did not venture to
put it into words. And the Tchalikovs were to him so utterly
uninteresting and worthless, that a moment later he had forgotten
them; looking into Anna Akimovna's eyes, he smiled with pleasure,
and his face wore an expression as though he were dreaming about
something very pleasant. Only, now standing close to him, Anna
Akimovna saw from his face, and especially from his eyes, how
exhausted and sleepy he was.

"Here, I ought to give him the fifteen hundred roubles!" she thought,
but for some reason this idea seemed to her incongruous and insulting
to Pimenov.

"I am sure you are aching all over after your work, and you come
to the door with me," she said as they went down the stairs. "Go
home."

But he did not catch her words. When they came out into the street,
he ran on ahead, unfastened the cover of the sledge, and helping
Anna Akimovna in, said:

"I wish you a happy Christmas!"

II

Christmas Morning

"They have left off ringing ever so long! It's dreadful; you won't
be there before the service is over! Get up!"

"Two horses are racing, racing . . ." said Anna Akimovna, and she
woke up; before her, candle in hand, stood her maid, red-haired
Masha