Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com what you’d scarcely give to a dog. ‘I am not worth it, I am
taking it from you, I am a burden on you,’ that’s what her
angel eyes try to express. We wait on her, but she doesn’t
like it. ‘I am a useless cripple, no good to anyone.’ As though
she were not worth it, when she is the saving of all of us with
her angelic sweetness. Without her, without her gentle word
it would be hell among us! She softens even Varvara. And
don’t judge Varvara harshly either, she is an angel too, she,
too, has suffered wrong. She came to us for the summer, and
she brought sixteen roubles she had earned by lessons and
saved up, to go back with to Petersburg in September, that
is now. But we took her money and lived on it, so now she
has nothing to go back with. Though indeed she couldn’t
go back, for she has to work for us like a slave. She is like
an overdriven horse with all of us on her back. She waits on
us all, mends and washes, sweeps the floor, puts mamma to
bed. And mamma is capricious and tearful and insane! And
now I can get a servant with this money, you understand,
Alexey Fyodorovitch, I can get medicines for the dear crea-
tures, I can send my student to Petersburg, I can buy beef, I
can feed them properly. Good Lord, but it’s a dream!’
Alyosha was delighted that he had brought him such
happiness and that the poor fellow had consented to be
made happy.
‘Stay, Alexey Fyodorovitch, stay,’ the captain began
to talk with frenzied rapidity, carried away by a new day-
dream. ‘Do you know that Ilusha and I will perhaps really
carry out our dream. We will buy a horse and cart, a black
horse, he insists on its being black, and we will set off as we