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Alency is tipsy, Vanka laughs, and Akulka's face is hidden she is well wrapped up. "The children will catch cold ..." thought Goussiev. "God grant them," he whispered, "a pure right mind that they may honour their parents and be better than their father and mother...." "The boots want soling," cried the sick sailor in a deep voice. "Aye, aye."
That sense of being ridiculed as an inexperienced simpleton, when I had merely paid my interlocutor the compliment of trusting him, never ceased to be a pain and a terror to me. The friendly policemen smiled impartially upon Vanka and us, as they helped to pack us in the drosky.
When Pelagueya died, they placed the orphan Vanka in the kitchen with his grandfather, and from the kitchen he was sent to Moscow to Aliakhin, the shoemaker. "Come quick, dear Grandpapa," continued Vanka, "I beseech you for Christ's sake take me from here. Have pity on a poor orphan, for here they beat me, and I am frightfully hungry, and so sad that I can't tell you, I cry all the time.
"Dear Grandfather Konstantin Makarych," he wrote, "I am writing you a letter. I wish you a Happy Christmas and all God's holy best. I have no mamma or papa, you are all I have." Vanka gave a look towards the window in which shone the reflection of his candle, and vividly pictured to himself his grandfather, Konstantin Makarych, who was night-watchman at Messrs. Zhivarev.
"Dear Grandpapa, and when the masters give a Christmas tree, take a golden walnut and hide it in my green box. Ask the young lady, Olga Ignatyevna, for it, say it's for Vanka." Vanka sighed convulsively, and again stared at the window. He remembered that his grandfather always went to the forest for the Christmas tree, and took his grandson with him. What happy times!
Even if players and bills were duly shielded from observation, the mauvais quart d'heure would be accurately revealed by the sudden rush for the sledges, which have been hanging in a swarm about the door, according to the usual convenient custom of Vanka, wherever lighted windows suggest possible patrons.
Again Gusev saw the big pond, the brick building, the village.... Again the sledge was coming along, again Vanka was laughing and Akulka, silly little thing, threw open her fur coat and stuck her feet out, as much as to say: "Look, good people, my snowboots are not like Vanka's, they are new ones." "Five years old, and she has no sense yet," Gusev muttered in delirium.
I was so angry that I could have punished him; for one moment I was not afraid to hit back. But this why why? broke out in my heart, and I forgot to revenge myself. It was so wonderful Well, there were no words in my head to say it, but it meant that Vanka abused me only because he did not understand.
Vanka folded the sheet of writing-paper twice, and put it into an envelope he had bought the day before for a kopeck. . . . After thinking a little, he dipped the pen and wrote the address: To grandfather in the village. Then he scratched his head, thought a little, and added: Konstantin Makaritch.
The first time Vanka threw mud at me, I ran home and complained to my mother, who brushed off my dress and said, quite resignedly, "How can I help you, my poor child? Vanka is a Gentile. The Gentiles do as they like with us Jews." The next time Vanka abused me, I did not cry, but ran for shelter, saying to myself, "Vanka is a Gentile."
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