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Chapter 2

Children

A

ND so on that frosty, snowy, and windy day in No-

vember, Kolya Krassotkin was sitting at home. It was

Sunday and there was no school. It had just struck eleven,

and he particularly wanted to go out ‘on very urgent busi-

ness,’ but he was left alone in charge of the house, for it so

happened that all its elder inmates were absent owing to

a sudden and singular event. Madame Krassotkin had let

two little rooms, separated from the rest of the house by

a passage, to a doctor’s wife with her two small children.

This lady was the same age as Anna Fyodorovna, and a great

friend of hers. Her husband, the doctor, had taken his de-

parture twelve months before, going first to Orenburg and

then to Tashkend, and for the last six months she had not

heard a word from him. Had it not been for her friendship

with Madame Krassotkin, which was some consolation to

the forsaken lady, she would certainly have completely dis-

solved away in tears. And now, to add to her misfortunes,

Katerina, her only servant, was suddenly moved the eve-

ning before to announce, to her mistress’s amazement, that

she proposed to bring a child into the world before morn-