I know nothing about it and only do silly things."

She felt depressed again, and was no longer glad that she had come,
and the thought of the lucky man upon whom fifteen hundred roubles
would drop from heaven no longer struck her as original and amusing.
To go to some Tchalikov or other, when at home a business worth a
million was gradually going to pieces and being ruined, and the
workpeople in the barracks were living worse than convicts, meant
doing something silly and cheating her conscience. Along the highroad
and across the fields near it, workpeople from the neighbouring
cotton and paper factories were walking towards the lights of the
town. There was the sound of talk and laughter in the frosty air.
Anna Akimovna looked at the women and young people, and she suddenly
felt a longing for a plain rough life among a crowd. She recalled
vividly that far-away time when she used to be called Anyutka, when
she was a little girl and used to lie under the same quilt with her
mother, while a washerwoman who lodged with them used to wash clothes
in the next room; while through the thin walls there came from the
neighbouring flats sounds of laughter, swearing, children's crying,
the accordion, and the whirr of carpenters' lathes and sewing-machines;
while her father, Akim Ivanovitch, who was clever at almost every
craft, would be soldering something near the stove, or drawing or
planing, taking no notice whatever of the noise and stuffiness. And
she longed to wash, to iron, to run to the shop and the tavern as
she used to do every day when she lived with her mother. She ought
to have been a work-girl and not the factory owner! Her big house
with its chandeliers and pictures; her footman Mishenka, with his
glossy moustache and swallowtail coat; the devout and dignified
Varvarushka, and smooth-tongued Agafyushka; and the young people
of both sexes who came almost every day to ask her for money, and