another word. And she
walked more and more quickly, without looking round.

"Lady," said Rodion, walking after her, "lady, wait a bit; hear what I
would say to you."

He followed her without his cap, and spoke softly as though begging.

"Lady, wait and hear what I will say to you."

They had walked out of the village, and Elena Ivanovna stopped beside a
cart in the shade of an old mountain ash.

"Don't be offended, lady," said Rodion. "What does it mean? Have
patience. Have patience for a couple of years. You will live here, you
will have patience, and it will all come round. Our folks are good and
peaceable; there's no harm in them; it's God's truth I'm telling you.
Don't mind Kozov and the Lytchkovs, and don't mind Volodka. He's a fool;
he listens to the first that speaks. The others are quiet folks; they
are silent. Some would be glad, you know, to say a word from the heart
and to stand up for themselves, but cannot. They have a heart and a
conscience, but no tongue. Don't be offended... have patience.... What
does it matter?"

Elena Ivanovna looked at the broad, tranquil river, pondering, and
tears flowed down her cheeks. And Rodion was troubled by those tears; he
almost cried himself.

"Never mind..." he muttered. "Have patience for a couple of years. You
can have the school, you can have the roads, only not all at once. If
you went, let us say, to sow corn on that mound you would first have to
weed it out, to pick out all the stones, and then to plough, and work
and work... and with the people, you see, it is the same... you must
work and work until you overcome them."

The crowd had moved away from Rodion's hut, and was coming along the
street towards the mountain ash. They began singing songs and playing
the concertina, and they kept coming closer and closer....

"Mamma, let us go away from here," said the little girl, huddling up to
her mother, pale and shaking all over; "let us go away, mamma!

"Where?"

"To Moscow.... Let us go, mamma."

The child began crying.

Rodion was utterly overcome; his face broke into profuse perspiration;
he took out of his pocket a little crooked cucumber, like a half-moon,
covered with crumbs of rye bread, and began thrusting it into the little
girl's hands.

"Come, come," he muttered, scowling severely; "take the little cucumber,
eat it up.... You mustn't cry. Mamma will whip you.... She'll tell your
father of you when you get home. Come, come...."

They walk