irst
he gave her bread and the green rind of cheese, then a piece of
meat, half a pie and chicken bones, while through hunger she ate
so quickly that she had not time to distinguish the taste, and the
more she ate the more acute was the feeling of hunger.

"Your masters don't feed you properly," said the stranger, seeing
with what ferocious greediness she swallowed the morsels without
munching them. "And how thin you are! Nothing but skin and
bones. . . ."

Kashtanka ate a great deal and yet did not satisfy her hunger, but
was simply stupefied with eating. After dinner she lay down in the
middle of the room, stretched her legs and, conscious of an agreeable
weariness all over her body, wagged her tail. While her new master,
lounging in an easy-chair, smoked a cigar, she wagged her tail and
considered the question, whether it was better at the stranger's
or at the carpenter's. The stranger's surroundings were poor and
ugly; besides the easy-chairs, the sofa, the lamps and the rugs,
there was nothing, and the room seemed empty. At the carpenter's
the whole place was stuffed full of things: he had a table, a bench,
a heap of shavings, planes, chisels, saws, a cage with a goldfinch,
a basin. . . . The stranger's room smelt of nothing, while there
was always a thick fog in the carpenter's room, and a glorious smell
of glue, varnish, and shavings. On the other hand, the stranger had
one great superiority--he gave her a great deal to eat and, to
do him full justice, when Kashtanka sat facing the table and looking
wistfully at him, he did not once hit or kick her, and did not once
shout: "Go away, damned brute!"

When he had finished his cigar her new master went out, and a minute
later came back holding a little mattress in his hands.

"Hey, you dog, come here!" he said, laying the mattress in the
corner near the dog. "Lie down here, go to sleep!"

Then he put out the lamp and went away. Kashtanka lay down on the
mattress and shut her eyes; the sound of a bark rose from the street,
and she would have liked to answer it, but all at once she was
overcome with unexpected melancholy. She thought of Luka Alexandritch,
of his son Fedyushka, and her snug little place under the bench. . . .
She remembered on the long winter evenings, when the carpenter
was planing or reading the paper aloud, Fedyushka usually played
with her. . . . He used to pull her from under the bench by her
hind legs, and play such tricks with her, that sh