inconvenient, so comfortless. Her abode consisted of one little room and
the kitchen close by. Her head ached every day after her work, and
after dinner she had heart-burn. She had to collect money from the
school-children for wood and for the watchman, and to give it to
the school guardian, and then to entreat him--that overfed, insolent
peasant--for God's sake to send her wood. And at night she dreamed of
examinations, peasants, snowdrifts. And this life was making her grow
old and coarse, making her ugly, angular, and awkward, as though she
were made of lead. She was always afraid, and she would get up from
her seat and not venture to sit down in the presence of a member of
the Zemstvo or the school guardian. And she used formal, deferential
expressions when she spoke of any one of them. And no one thought her
attractive, and life was passing drearily, without affection, without
friendly sympathy, without interesting acquaintances. How awful it would
have been in her position if she had fallen in love!

"Hold on, Vassilyevna!"

Again a sharp ascent uphill....

She had become a schoolmistress from necessity, without feeling any
vocation for it; and she had never thought of a vocation, of serving the
cause of enlightenment; and it always seemed to her that what was most
important in her work was not the children, nor enlightenment, but the
examinations. And what time had she for thinking of vocation, of serving
the cause of enlightenment? Teachers, badly paid doctors, and their
assistants, with their terribly hard work, have not even the comfort of
thinking that they are serving an idea or the people, as their heads are
always stuffed with thoughts of their daily bread, of wood for the fire,
of bad roads, of illnesses. It is a hard-working, an uninteresting life,