"Come and be registered!" he boomed out.

All of them, including the funny lad who hopped, filed up to the
window. The assistant asked each one his name, and his father's
name, where he lived, how long he had been ill, and so on. From his
mother's answers, Pashka learned that his name was not Pashka, but
Pavel Galaktionov, that he was seven years old, that he could not
read or write, and that he had been ill ever since Easter.

Soon after the registration, he had to stand up for a little while;
the doctor in a white apron, with a towel round his waist, walked
across the waiting-room. As he passed by the boy who hopped, he
shrugged his shoulders, and said in a sing-song tenor:

"Well, you are an idiot! Aren't you an idiot? I told you to come
on Monday, and you come on Friday. It's nothing to me if you don't
come at all, but you know, you idiot, your leg will be done for!"

The lad made a pitiful face, as though he were going to beg for
alms, blinked, and said:

"Kindly do something for me, Ivan Mikolaitch!"

"It's no use saying 'Ivan Mikolaitch,'" the doctor mimicked him.
"You were told to come on Monday, and you ought to obey. You are
an idiot, and that is all about it."

The doctor began seeing the patients. He sat in his little room,
and called up the patients in turn. Sounds were continually coming
from the little room, piercing wails, a child's crying, or the