y round and close-cropped, his face
shaven except for a thin mustache, the ends of which pointed downward.

After carefully scrutinizing the room with his large, gray, protuberant
eyes, he crossed his legs, and, leaning his head over the table,
inquired:

"Is this your own house, or do you rent it?"

The mother, sitting opposite him, answered:

"We rent it."

"Not a very fine house," he remarked.

"Pasha will soon be here; wait," said the mother quietly.

"Why, yes, I am waiting," said the man.

His calmness, his deep, sympathetic voice, and the candor and
simplicity of his face encouraged the mother. He looked at her openly
and kindly, and a merry sparkle played in the depths of his transparent
eyes. In the entire angular, stooping figure, with its thin legs,
there was something comical, yet winning. He was dressed in a blue
shirt, and dark, loose trousers thrust into his boots. She was seized
with the desire to ask him who he was, whence he came, and whether he
had known her son long. But suddenly he himself put a question,
leaning forward with a swing of his whole body.

"Who made that hole in your forehead, mother?"

His question was uttered in a kind voice and with a noticeable smile in
his eyes; but the woman was offended by the sally. She pressed her
lips together tightly, and after a pause rejoined with cold civility:

"And what business is it of yours, sir?"

With the same swing of his whole body toward her, he said:

"Now, don't get angry! I ask because my foster mother had her head
smashed just exactly like yours. It was her man who did it for her
once, with a last--he was a shoemaker, you see. She was a washerwoman
and he was a shoemaker. It was after she had taken me as her son that
she found him somewhere, a drunkard, and married him, to her great
misfortune. He beat her--I tell you, my skin almost burst with terror."

The mother felt herself disarmed by his openness. Moreover, it
occurred to her that perhaps her son would be displeased with her harsh
reply to this odd personage. Smiling guiltily she said:

"I am not angry, but--you see--you asked so very soon. It was my good
man, God rest his soul! who treated me to the cut. Are you a Tartar?"

The stranger stretched out his feet, and smiled so broad a smile that
the ends of his mustache traveled to the nape of his neck. Then he said
seriously:

"Not yet. I'm not a Tartar yet."

"I asked because I rather thought the wa