wide open and out into the
street, careering with all its bells jingling, came a troika. It was the
engineer and his daughter going for a drive. Time to go to bed!

I had a room in the house, but I lived in the courtyard in a hut, under
the same roof as the coach-house, which had been built probably as a
harness-room--for there were big nails in the walls--but now it was not
used, and my father for thirty years had kept his newspapers there,
which for some reason he had bound half-yearly and then allowed no one
to touch. Living there I was less in touch with my father and his
guests, and I used to think that if I did not live in a proper room and
did not go to the house every day for meals, my father's reproach that I
was living on him lost some of its sting.

My sister was waiting for me. She had brought me supper unknown to my
father; a small piece of cold veal and a slice of bread. In the family
there were sayings: "Money loves an account," or "A copeck saves a
rouble," and so on, and my sister, impressed by such wisdom, did her
best to cut down expenses and made us feed rather meagrely. She put the
plate on the table, sat on my bed, and began to cry.

"Misail," she said, "what are you doing to us?"

She did not cover her face, her tears ran down her cheeks and hands, and
her expression was sorrowful. She fell on the pillow, gave way to her
tears, trembling all over and sobbing.

"You have left your work again!" she said. "How awful!"

"Do try to understand, sister!" I said, and because she cried I was
filled with despair.

As though it were deliberately arranged, the paraffin in my little lamp
ran out, and the lamp smoked and guttered, and the old hooks in the wall
looked terrible and their shadows flickered.

"Spare us!" said my sister, rising up. "Father is in an awful state, and
I am ill. I shall go mad. What will become of you?" she asked, sobbing
and holding out her hands to me. "I ask you, I implore you, in the name
of our dear mother, to go back to your work."

"I cannot, Cleopatra," I said, feeling that only a little more would
make me give in. "I cannot."

"Why?" insisted my sister, "why? If you have not made it up with your
chief, look for another place. For instance, why shouldn't you work on
the railway? I have just spoken to Aniuta Blagovo, and she assures me
you would be taken on, and she even promised to do what she could for
you. For goodness sake, Misail, think! Think it over, I implore y