ways went into the forest to get
the Christmas tree for his master's family, and took his grandson
with him. It was a merry time! Grandfather made a noise in his
throat, the forest crackled with the frost, and looking at them
Vanka chortled too. Before chopping down the Christmas tree,
grandfather would smoke a pipe, slowly take a pinch of snuff, and
laugh at frozen Vanka. . . . The young fir trees, covered with hoar
frost, stood motionless, waiting to see which of them was to die.
Wherever one looked, a hare flew like an arrow over the snowdrifts
. . . . Grandfather could not refrain from shouting: "Hold him, hold
him . . . hold him! Ah, the bob-tailed devil!"

When he had cut down the Christmas tree, grandfather used to drag
it to the big house, and there set to work to decorate it. . . .
The young lady, who was Vanka's favourite, Olga Ignatyevna, was the
busiest of all. When Vanka's mother Pelageya was alive, and a servant
in the big house, Olga Ignatyevna used to give him goodies, and
having nothing better to do, taught him to read and write, to count
up to a hundred, and even to dance a quadrille. When Pelageya died,
Vanka had been transferred to the servants' kitchen to be with his
grandfather, and from the kitchen to the shoemaker's in Moscow.

"Do come, dear grandfather," Vanka went on with his letter. "For
Christ's sake, I beg you, take me away. Have pity on an unhappy
orphan like me; here everyone knocks me about, and I am fearfully
hungry; I can't tell you what misery it is, I am always crying. And
the other day the master hit me on the head with a last, so that I
fell down. My life is wretched, worse than any dog's. . . . I send
greetings to Alyona, one-eyed Yegorka, and the coachman, and don't
give my concertina to anyone. I remain, your grandson, Ivan Zhukov.
Dear grandfather, do come."

Vanka folded the sheet of writing-paper twice, and put it into an
envelope he had bought the day before for a kopeck. . . . After
thinking a little, he dipped the pen and wrote the address:

_To grandfather in the village._

Then he scratched his head, thought a little, and added: _Konstantin
Makaritch._ Glad that he had not been prevented from writing, he
put on his cap and, without putting on his little greatcoat, ran
out into the street as he was in his shirt. . . .

The shopmen at the butcher's, whom he had questioned the day before,
told him that letters were put in post-boxes, and from the boxes