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If any one had taken pity on this boy, Nekhludoff thought while looking at the sickly, frightened face of the boy, before want had driven him from the village to the city, and relieved that want, or, when, after twelve hours' work in the factory, he was visiting inns with grown-up comrades, some one had told him, "Don't go, Vania; it is bad," the boy would not have gone, or got drunk, and the burglary would never have occurred.
"Or even later, when, after 12 hours' work at the factory, he was going to the public-house, led away by his companions, had some one then come and said, 'Don't go, Vania; it is not right, he would not have gone, nor got into bad ways, and would not have done any wrong.
If a siskin or a chaffinch could have spoken, and had begun declaring that it would peck another bird to death, it would not have reduced me to greater amazement than did Ivan at that moment. What! Suhys' Vania, that dancing, jesting, comic fellow, the favourite playfellow of children, and a child himself, that kindest-hearted of creatures, a murderer! What ridiculous nonsense!
They open at last, and out come the conscripts, unsteady, but trying to put a good face on it. Here are Piotr and Vania and Makar trying not to look their dear ones in the face. Nothing is heard but the wailing of the wives and mothers. Some of the lads embrace them and weep with them, others make a show of courage, and others try to comfort them.
Did you, for good wages, mount a scaffold around the cupola of the village church, and, climbing thence to the cross above, miss your footing on a beam, and fall headlong with none at hand but Uncle Michai the good uncle who, scratching the back of his neck, and muttering, 'Ah, Vania, for once you have been too clever! straightway lashed himself to a rope, and took your place?
"It's not possible!" exclaimed the wife. "It's true. And the boy's only nine years old, that Vania Moroshkine." "What did you do to try to save him?" asked the wife. "I tried everything that could be done. I gave him an emetic and put a mustard-plaster on him. He has every symptom of delirium tremens." "It's no wonder the whole family are drunkards.
At times Alexey Sergeitch, who was, as I have said already, exceedingly fond of watching dancing, could not resist shouting, 'Little Vania, here! coach-boy! Dance us the fish, smartly now'; and a minute later he would whisper enthusiastically: 'Ah, what a fellow it is! Well, on my last visit, this Ivan Suhih came into my room, and, without saying a word, fell on his knees.
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