waiter in the "Hermitage" garden, had put him into
a situation. And now, addressing the Matvyeitchevs, Nikolay said
emphatically:

"Ivan Makaritch was my benefactor, and I am bound to pray for him day
and night, as it is owing to him I have become a good man."

"My good soul!" a tall old woman, the sister of Ivan Makaritch, said
tearfully, "and not a word have we heard about him, poor dear."

"In the winter he was in service at Omon's, and this season there was a
rumour he was somewhere out of town, in gardens.... He has aged! In
old days he would bring home as much as ten roubles a day in the
summer-time, but now things are very quiet everywhere. The old man
frets."

The women looked at Nikolay's feet, shod in felt boots, and at his pale
face, and said mournfully:

"You are not one to get on, Nikolay Osipitch; you are not one to get on!
No, indeed!"

And they all made much of Sasha. She was ten years old, but she was
little and very thin, and might have been taken for no more than seven.
Among the other little girls, with their sunburnt faces and roughly
cropped hair, dressed in long faded smocks, she with her white little
face, with her big dark eyes, with a red ribbon in her hair, looked
funny, as though she were some little wild creature that had been caught
and brought into the hut.

"She can read, too," Olga said in her praise, looking tenderly at her
daughter. "Read a little, child!" she said, taking the gospel from the
corner. "You read, and the good Christian people will listen."

The testament was an old and heavy one in leather binding, with
dog's-eared edges, and it exhaled a smell as though monks had come into
the hut. Sasha raised her eyebrows and began in a loud rhythmic chant:

"'And the angel of the Lord... appeared unto Joseph, saying unto him:
Rise up, and take the Babe and His mother.'"

"The Babe and His mother," Olga repeated, and flushed all over with
emotion.

"'And flee into Egypt,... and tarry there until such time as...'"

At the word "tarry" Olga could not refrain from tears. Looking at her,
Marya began to whimper, and after her Ivan Makaritch's sister. The old
father cleared his throat, and bustled about to find something to give
his grand-daughter, but, finding nothing, gave it up with a wave of his
hand. And when the reading was over the neighbours dispersed to their
homes, feeling touched and very much pleased with Olga and Sasha.

As it was a holiday, the family spent the