preeshhol"--"A
stranger, a stranger, a stranger has arrived."

The mother, a pugnacious gossip with arms akimbo, looked at me with
perturbed pleasure. "Are you a beggar or a customer?" she asked.
"Because if you're a beggar," etc. I cut her short as soon as I could.
I assured her I should be much pleased to be a customer.

I ordered tea. The boy came in and claimed me as his find, but was
snubbed. My hostess proceeded to ask me every question known to
her. To my replies, which were often not a little surprising, she
invariably replied with one of these exclamations, "Say it again, if
you please." "Indeed!" "With what pleasure!"

That I was a tramp and earned my living by writing about my adventures
pleased her immensely. I earned my living by having holidays, and
gained money where other travellers never did anything but spend.

"With what pleasure" did she hear that literary men were paid so many
roubles a thousand words for their writings. One could easily write an
immense quantity, she thought.

The little boy looked at me with bright eyes, and listened. Presently,
when his mother was dilating on the inferiority of painting as a
profession, he broke in.

The mother was saying, "Not only does the painter catch cold standing
still so long in marshy places, but when he has finished his pictures
he has to hawk them in the fairs, and even then he may not be able to
sell them."

"What fairs?" asked the boy.

"The fairs of Moscow, Petersburg, Kiev, and the great towns. Some sell
for fifty roubles, some for five hundred, some for five thousand and
more. A little picture would go for five roubles perhaps."

"What size pictures would one buy for fifty roubles?" asked the boy.

"Oh, about the same size as from the floor to the ceiling."

"What size would one be that cost five thousand roubles?"

"Oh, an immense picture; one could build a country house out of it."

The boy reflected.

"And five hundred thousand roubles?" he asked. But his mother remained
profitably silent over the preparation of the family soup. The fire
now blazed with the additional wood that had been heaped upon it. The
little voice repeated the absurd question, and the mother shouted,
"Silence! Don't make yourself a nuisance."

"But how big would it be?" whined the boy. "Tell me."

"Oh, the same, but bigger, stupid!"

Thereupon my little friend was very happy, and he apparently ascribed
his happiness to me.

A few minutes later he abru