“Why is he playing these antics?” thought Anna Akimovna with annoyance.  “One can see at once he is used to dealing with merchants.”

“Speak to me like a human being,” she said.  “I don’t care for farces.’’

“Yes, madam; five bereaved children round their mother’s coffin with funeral candles—­that’s a farce?  Eh?” said Tchalikov bitterly, and turned away.

“Hold your tongue,” whispered his wife, and she pulled at his sleeve.  “The place has not been tidied up, madam,” she said, addressing Anna Akimovna; “please excuse it . . . you know what it is where there are children.  A crowded hearth, but harmony.”

“I am not going to give them the fifteen hundred,” Anna Akimovna thought again.

And to escape as soon as possible from these people and from the sour smell, she brought out her purse and made up her mind to leave them twenty-five roubles, not more; but she suddenly felt ashamed that she had come so far and disturbed people for so little.

“If you give me paper and ink, I will write at once to a doctor who is a friend of mine to come and see you,” she said, flushing red.  “He is a very good doctor.  And I will leave you some money for medicine.”

Madame Tchalikov was hastening to wipe the table.

“It’s messy here!  What are you doing?” hissed Tchalikov, looking at her wrathfully.  “Take her to the lodger’s room!  I make bold to ask you, madam, to step into the lodger’s room,” he said, addressing Anna Akimovna.  “It’s clean there.”

“Osip Ilyitch told us not to go into his room!” said one of the little girls, sternly.

But they had already led Anna Akimovna out of the kitchen, through a narrow passage room between two bedsteads:  it was evident from the arrangement of the beds that in one two slept lengthwise, and in the other three slept across the bed.  In the lodger’s room, that came next, it really was clean.  A neat-looking bed with a red woollen quilt, a pillow in a white pillow-case, even a slipper for the watch, a table covered with a hempen cloth and on it, an inkstand of milky-looking glass, pens, paper, photographs in frames—­ everything as it ought to be; and another table for rough work, on which lay tidily arranged a watchmaker’s tools and watches taken to pieces.  On the walls hung hammers, pliers, awls, chisels, nippers, and so on, and there were three hanging clocks which were ticking; one was a big clock with thick weights, such as one sees in eating-houses.

As she sat down to write the letter, Anna Akimovna saw facing her on the table the photographs of her father and of herself.  That surprised her.

“Who lives here with you?” she asked.

“Our lodger, madam, Pimenov.  He works in your factory.”

“Oh, I thought he must be a watchmaker.”

“He repairs watches privately, in his leisure hours.  He is an amateur.”

After a brief silence during which nothing could be heard but the ticking of the clocks and the scratching of the pen on the paper, Tchalikov heaved a sigh and said ironically, with indignation: