he cook has gone out to buy the coffin."

She cooks, I thought to myself, and she always has such clean hands
and dresses so neatly! I should like to see her in the kitchen. She's
a strange girl.

I remember another conversation by the hedge. This time Raissa had
her little deaf-and-dumb sister with her. She was a pretty child,
with great, startled eyes, and a wilderness of short, dark hair on her
little head: Raissa had also dark, lustreless hair. It was soon after
Latkin's attack of paralysis.

"I don't know what to do," began Raissa: "the doctor has prescribed
something for father, and I must go to the apothecary's'; and our
serf" (Latkin had still one serf left) "has brought us some wood from
the village, and also a goose. But the landlord has taken it away.
'You are in my debt,' he said."

"Did he take the goose?" asked David.

"No, he did not take the goose. 'It's too old,' he said, 'and it's
worth nothing: that's the reason the man brought it to you.'"

"But he had no right to it," cried David.

"He had no right to it, but he took it all the same. I went into the
garret--we have an old chest there--and I hunted through it; and see
what I found." She took out from under her shawl a great spy-glass,
finished in copper and yellow morocco.

David, as an amateur and connoisseur of every kind of instrument,
seized it at once. "An English glass," he said, holding it first at
one eye and then at the other--"a marine telescope."

"And the glasses are whole," continued Raissa. "I showed it to father,
and he said, 'Take it to the jeweler.' What do you think? Will they
give me money for it? Of what use is a telescope to us? If we could
see in the glass how beautiful we are! but we have no looking-glass,
unfortunately."

And when she had said these words she suddenly laughed aloud. Her
little sister could not have heard her, but probably she felt the
shaking of her body: she had hold of Raissa's hand, and raising her
great eyes, she made up a frightened face and began to cry.

"She's always like that," said Raissa: "she doesn't like to have
people laugh.--Here, then, darling, I won't," she added, stooping
down to the child and running, her fingers through its hair. "Do you
see?"

The laughter died away from Raissa's face, and her lips, with the
corners prettily turned up, again became immovable: the child was
quiet.

Raissa stood up: "Here, David, take care of the telescope: it's too
bad about the wood, and