nds:

"Are you sick, or what? Arabian adventure! Ah, what a look you
have! What has happened? Maybe those pains have come; you have
had them a number of times already. Why not take off your fur?
Wait! I will help you this minute. Oh, you will be sick in
addition to everything else."

She was a squatty woman, heavy, with a striped kerchief on her
shoulders, and wearing a short skirt, from under which appeared
flat feet in tattered overshoes. She was seventy years old, at
least; her large, sallow face was much withered. Bordered by gray
hair and a white cap that face was bright with the gleam of dark
eyes, still fiery, and quickly glancing from under a wrinkled,
high forehead. Her whole figure had in it something of the
fields, something primitive, which seemed not to have the least
relation to that little drawing-room and its owner. That room
contained everything which is found usually in such apartments,
therefore: a sofa, armchairs, a table, a mirror with a console, a
low and broad ottoman with cushions in Oriental fashion,
porcelain figures on the console, old-fashioned shelves with
books in nice bindings, a few oil paintings, small but neat, on
the walls, a number of photographs, tastefully grouped above the
ottoman, a large album on the table before the sofa. But all this
was a collection brought together at various seasons, and injured
by time. The covering of the cushions had faded, the gilding on
the mirror frame was worn here and there, the leather covering on
the furniture was worn and showed through cracks the stuffing
within, the album was torn, the porcelain base of the lamp was
broken. At the first cast of the eye the little drawing-room
seemed elegant, but after a while, through spots and rents mended
carefully, want was observed creeping forth. This want was hidden
chiefly by perfect and minute cleanliness, in which one could
recognize active, careful hands, industrious, untiring sweeping
out, rubbing out, sewing, mending--those were the lean, aged
hands, with broad palms and short fingers, which were now helping
Kranitski to remove his fur coat. Meanwhile, a scolding, harsh
voice, with tenderness at the base of it, continued:

"Again a night passed away from home. Surely off there with
cards, or with madams of some sort! Oi, an offense against God!
And this time you come home sick. I see that you are sick, your
whole face is covered with red spots, you are hardly able to
stand on your feet. Arabian