an awl, and Yegor, always joking with his comrades about his sickness.
Sometimes other people were present who had come from various distant
cities. The long conversations always turned on one and the same
thing, on the working people of the world. The comrades discussed the
workingmen, got into arguments about them, became heated, waved their
hands, and drank much tea; while Nikolay, in the noise of the
conversation, silently composed proclamations. Then he read them to the
comrades, who copied them on the spot in printed letters. The mother
carefully collected the pieces of the torn, rough copies, and burned
them.

She poured, out tea for them, and wondered at the warmth with which
they discussed life and the workingpeople, the means whereby to sow
truth among them the sooner and the better, and how to elevate their
spirit. These problems were always agitating the comrades; their lives
revolved about them. Often they angrily disagreed, blamed one another
for something, got offended, and again discussed.

The mother felt that she knew the life of the workingmen better than
these people, and saw more clearly than they the enormity of the task
they assumed. She could look upon them with the somewhat melancholy
indulgence of a grown-up person toward children who play man and wife
without understanding the drama of the relation.

Sometimes Sashenka came. She never stayed long, and always spoke in a
businesslike way without smiling. She did not once fail to ask on
leaving how Pavel Mikhaylovich was.

"Is he well?" she would ask.

"Thank God! So, so. He's in good spirits."

"Give him my regards," the girl would request, and then disappear.

Sometimes the mother complained to Sashenka because Pavel was detained
so long and no date was yet set for his trial. Sashenka looked gloomy,
and maintained silence, her fingers twitching. Nilovna was tempted to
say to her: "My dear girl, why, I know you love him, I know." But
Sashenka's austere face, her compressed lips, and her dry, businesslike
manner, which seemed to betoken a desire for silence as soon as
possible, forbade any demonstration of sentiment. With a sigh the
mother mutely clasped the hand that the girl extended to her, and
thought: "My unhappy girl!"

Once Natasha came. She showed great delight at seeing the mother,
kissed her, and among other things announced to her quietly, as if she
had just thought of the thing:

"My mother died. Poor woman,