d clods of dust, his skin is broken." But now he is small
and wretched, he is like a beggar at the church porch.

Here he says:

"What is man, that he should be clean? And he which is born of woman,
that he should be righteous?" [These words attributed by Mayakin to Job
are from Eliphaz the Temanite's reply--Translator's Note.]

"He says this to God," explained Mayakin, inspired. "How, says he, can I
be righteous, since I am made of flesh? That's a question asked of God.
How is that?"

And the reader, triumphantly and interrogatively looks around at his
listeners.

"He merited it, the righteous man," they replied with a sigh.

Yakov Mayakin eyes them with a smile, and says:

"Fools! You better put the children to sleep."

Ignat visited the Mayakins every day, brought playthings for his son,
caught him up into his arms and hugged him, but sometimes dissatisfied
he said to him with ill-concealed uneasiness:

"Why are you such a bugbear? Oh! Why do you laugh so little?"

And he would complain to the lad's godfather:

"I am afraid that he may turn out to be like his mother. His eyes are
cheerless."

"You disturb yourself rather too soon," Mayakin smilingly replied.

He, too, loved his godson, and when Ignat announced to him one day that
he would take Foma to his own house, Mayakin was very much grieved.

"Leave him here," he begged. "See, the child is used to us; there! he's
crying."

"He'll cease crying. I did not beget him for you. The air of the
place is disagreeable. It is as tedious here as in an old believer's
hermitage. This is harmful to the child. And without him I am lonesome.
I come home--it is empty. I can see nothing there. It would not do for
me to remove to your house for his sake. I am not for him, he is for me.
So. And now that my sister has come to my house there will be somebody
to look after him."

And the boy was brought to his father's house.

There he was met by a comical old woman, with a long, hook-like nose and
with a mouth devoid of teeth. Tall, stooping, dressed in gray, with gray
hair, covered by a black silk cap, she did not please the boy at first;
she even frightened him. But when he noticed on the wrinkled face her
black eyes, which beamed so tenderly on him, he at once pressed his head
close to her knees in confidence.

"My sickly little orphan!" she said in a velvet-like voice that trembled
from the fulness of sound, and quietly patted his face with her hand,
"stay c