They would distribute also in small sums four hundred and seventy roubles—­the interest on a sum bequeathed by the late Akim Ivanovitch for the relief of the poor and needy.  There would be a hideous crush.  From the gates to the doors of the office there would stretch a long file of strange people with brutal faces, in rags, numb with cold, hungry and already drunk, in husky voices calling down blessings upon Anna Akimovna, their benefactress, and her parents:  those at the back would press upon those in front, and those in front would abuse them with bad language.  The clerk would get tired of the noise, the swearing, and the sing-song whining and blessing; would fly out and give some one a box on the ear to the delight of all.  And her own people, the factory hands, who received nothing at Christmas but their wages, and had already spent every farthing of it, would stand in the middle of the yard, looking on and laughing—­some enviously, others ironically.

“Merchants, and still more their wives, are fonder of beggars than they are of their own workpeople,” thought Anna Akimovna.  “It’s always so.”

Her eye fell upon the roll of money.  It would be nice to distribute that hateful, useless money among the workpeople tomorrow, but it did not do to give the workpeople anything for nothing, or they would demand it again next time.  And what would be the good of fifteen hundred roubles when there were eighteen hundred workmen in the factory besides their wives and children?  Or she might, perhaps, pick out one of the writers of those begging letters—­ some luckless man who had long ago lost all hope of anything better, and give him the fifteen hundred.  The money would come upon the poor creature like a thunder-clap, and perhaps for the first time in his life he would feel happy.  This idea struck Anna Akimovna as original and amusing, and it fascinated her.  She took one letter at random out of the pile and read it.  Some petty official called Tchalikov had long been out of a situation, was ill, and living in Gushtchin’s Buildings; his wife was in consumption, and he had five little girls.  Anna Akimovna knew well the four-storeyed house, Gushtchin’s Buildings, in which Tchalikov lived.  Oh, it was a horrid, foul, unhealthy house!

“Well, I will give it to that Tchalikov,” she decided.  “I won’t send it; I had better take it myself to prevent unnecessary talk.  Yes,” she reflected, as she put the fifteen hundred roubles in her pocket, “and I’ll have a look at them, and perhaps I can do something for the little girls.”

She felt light-hearted; she rang the bell and ordered the horses to be brought round.

When she got into the sledge it was past six o’clock in the evening.  The windows in all the blocks of buildings were brightly lighted up, and that made the huge courtyard seem very dark:  at the gates, and at the far end of the yard near the warehouses and the workpeople’s barracks, electric lamps were gleaming.