to the mother. "He's so
stern and does not smile."

The mother tells her that _he_ is always like that. . . . He is
honest, fair, prudent, sensibly economical, but all that to such
an exceptional degree that simple mortals feel suffocated by it.
His relations have parted from him, the servants will not stay more
than a month; they have no friends; his wife and children are always
on tenterhooks from terror over every step they take. He does not
shout at them nor beat them, his virtues are far more numerous than
his defects, but when he goes out of the house they all feel better,
and more at ease. Why it is so the woman herself cannot say.

"The basins must be properly washed and put away in the store
cupboard," says Kiryakov, coming into the bedroom. "These bottles
must be put away too: they may come in handy."

What he says is very simple and ordinary, but the midwife for some
reason feels flustered. She begins to be afraid of the man and
shudders every time she hears his footsteps. In the morning as she
is preparing to depart she sees Kiryakov's little son, a pale,
close-cropped schoolboy, in the dining-room drinking his tea. . . .
Kiryakov is standing opposite him, saying in his flat, even voice:

"You know how to eat, you must know how to work too. You have just
swallowed a mouthful but have not probably reflected that that
mouthful costs money and money is obtained by work. You must eat
and reflect. . . ."

The midwife looks at the boy's dull face, and it seems to her as
though the very air is heavy, that a little more and the very walls
will fall, unable to endure the crushing presence of the peculiar
man. Beside herself with terror, and by now feeling a violent hatred
for the man, Marya Petrovna gathers up her bundles and hurriedly
departs.

Half-way home she remembers that she has forgotten to ask for her
three roubles, but after stopping and thinking for a minute, with
a wave of her hand, she goes on.

AT THE BARBER'S

MORNING. It is not yet seven o'clock, but Makar Kuzmitch Blyostken's
shop is already open. The barber himself, an unwashed, greasy, but
foppishly dressed youth of three and twenty, is busy clearing up;
there is really nothing to be cleared away, but he is perspiring
with his exertions. In one place he polishes with a rag, in another
he scrapes with his finger or catches a bug and brushes it off the
wall.

The barber's shop is small, narrow, and unclean. The log walls are
hung wit