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This child was incessantly smiling. Nekhludoff knew that it was the smile of suffering. He asked who that woman was. It transpired that the woman's husband had been in prison for the past six months "feeding the insects" as they termed it, for cutting down two lindens. Nekhludoff turned to the woman, Anisia. "How do you fare?" he asked. "What do you live on?" "How do I live?
"You hear how he slanders me, prince," said Lebedeff, almost beside himself with rage. "I may be a drunkard, an evil-doer, a thief, but at least I can say one thing for myself. He does not know how should he, mocker that he is? that when he came into the world it was I who washed him, and dressed him in his swathing-bands, for my sister Anisia had lost her husband, and was in great poverty.
"It is that very Anisia I told you about," said the elder boy. Nekhludoff turned to Anisia. "How do you live?" he asked. "By what means do you gain your livelihood?" "How do I live? I go begging," said Anisia, and began to cry. Nekhludoff took out his pocket-book, and gave the woman a 10-rouble note.
They all laughed, and the thought crossed the prince's mind that perhaps Lebedeff was really trifling in this way because he foresaw inconvenient questions, and wanted to gain time. "He is a traitor! a conspirator!" shouted Lebedeff, who seemed to have lost all control over himself. "A monster! a slanderer! Ought I to treat him as a nephew, the son of my sister Anisia?" "Oh! do be quiet!
"And Anisia, she is still poorer; she's not even got a cow. They go begging," said little Fedka. "She's not got a cow, but they are only three persons, and Martha's family are five," objected the elder boy. "But the other's a widow," the pink boy said, standing up for Anisia. "You say Anisia is a widow, and Martha is no better than a widow," said the elder boy; "she's also no husband."
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