A little boy in tatters stopped before him, looked timidly at him, held out his hand . . .
'For Christ's sake, good gentleman.'
Pyetushkov pulled out a copper.
'For your loneliness, poor orphan,' he said with effort, and he walked back to the baker's shop. On the threshold of Vassilissa's room Ivan Afanasiitch stopped.
'Yes,' he thought, 'these are my friends. Here is my family, this is it. . . And here Bublitsyn and there Bublitsyn.'
Vassilissa was sitting with her back to him, winding worsted, and carelessly singing to herself; she was wearing a striped cotton gown; her hair was done up anyhow. . . The room, insufferably hot, smelt of feather beds and old rags; jaunty, reddish-brown 'Prussians' scurried rapidly here and there across the walls; on the decrepit chest of drawers, with holes in it where the locks should have been, beside a broken jar, lay a woman's shabby slipper. . . Kozlov's poem was still where it had fallen on the floor. . . . Pyetushkov shook his head, folded his arms, and went away. He was hurt.
At home he called for his things to dress. Onisim slouched off after his better coat. Pyetushkov had a great desire to draw Onisim into conversation, but Onisim preserved a sullen silence. At last Ivan Afanasiitch could hold out no longer.
'Why don't you ask me where I'm going?'
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