trangers in the house, I know, but we've none of
our own now. When Agnia was here I had no women to see me, for I had one
at home; but now, you can see for yourself, sir,... one can't
help having strangers. In Agnia's time, of course, there was nothing
irregular, because..."

"Be off, you scoundrel!" Miguev shouted at him, stamping, and he went
back into the room.

Anna Filippovna, amazed and wrathful, was sitting as before, her
tear-stained eyes fixed on the baby....

"There! there!" Miguev muttered with a pale face, twisting his lips
into a smile. "It was a joke.... It's not my baby,... it's
the washer-woman's!... I... I was joking.... Take it to the
porter."

SMALL FRY

"HONORED Sir, Father and Benefactor!" a petty clerk called Nevyrazimov
was writing a rough copy of an Easter congratulatory letter. "I trust
that you may spend this Holy Day even as many more to come, in good
health and prosperity. And to your family also I..."

The lamp, in which the kerosene was getting low, was smoking and
smelling. A stray cockroach was running about the table in alarm near
Nevyrazimov's writing hand. Two rooms away from the office Paramon the
porter was for the third time cleaning his best boots, and with such
energy that the sound of the blacking-brush and of his expectorations
was audible in all the rooms.

"What else can I write to him, the rascal?" Nevyrazimov wondered,
raising his eyes to the smutty ceiling.

On the ceiling he saw a dark circle--the shadow of the lamp-shade. Below
it was the dusty cornice, and lower still the wall, which had once been
painted a bluish muddy color. And the office seemed to him such a place
of desolation that he felt sorry, not only for himself, but even for the
cockroach.

"When I am off duty I shall go away, but he'll be on duty here all his
cockroach-life," he thought, stretching. "I am bored! Shall I clean my
boots?"

And stretching once more, Nevyrazimov slouched lazily to the porter's
room. Paramon had finished cleaning his boots. Crossing himself with
one hand and holding the brush in the other, he was standing at the open
window-pane, listening.

"They're ringing," he whispered to Nevyrazimov, looking at him with eyes
intent and wide open. "Already!"

Nevyrazimov put his ear to the open pane and listened. The Easter chimes
floated into the room with a whiff of fresh spring air. The booming of
the bells mingled with the rumble of carriages, and above the chaos
of