those in front would abuse them with bad language. The clerk would
get tired of the noise, the swearing, and the sing-song whining and
blessing; would fly out and give some one a box on the ear to the
delight of all. And her own people, the factory hands, who received
nothing at Christmas but their wages, and had already spent every
farthing of it, would stand in the middle of the yard, looking on
and laughing--some enviously, others ironically.

"Merchants, and still more their wives, are fonder of beggars than
they are of their own workpeople," thought Anna Akimovna. "It's
always so."

Her eye fell upon the roll of money. It would be nice to distribute
that hateful, useless money among the workpeople tomorrow, but it
did not do to give the workpeople anything for nothing, or they
would demand it again next time. And what would be the good of
fifteen hundred roubles when there were eighteen hundred workmen
in the factory besides their wives and children? Or she might,
perhaps, pick out one of the writers of those begging letters--
some luckless man who had long ago lost all hope of anything better,
and give him the fifteen hundred. The money would come upon the
poor creature like a thunder-clap, and perhaps for the first time
in his life he would feel happy. This idea struck Anna Akimovna as
original and amusing, and it fascinated her. She took one letter
at random out of the pile and read it. Some petty official called
Tchalikov had long been out of a situation, was ill, and living in
Gushtchin's Buildings; his wife was in consumption, and he had five
little girls. Anna Akimovna knew well the four-storeyed house,
Gushtchin's Buildings, in which Tchalikov lived. Oh, it was a horrid,
foul, unhealthy house!