"You disturb yourself rather too soon," Mayakin smilingly replied.

He, too, loved his godson, and when Ignat announced to him one
day that he would take Foma to his own house, Mayakin was very
much grieved.

"Leave him here," he begged. "See, the child is used to us;
there! he's crying."

"He'll cease crying. I did not beget him for you. The air of the
place is disagreeable. It is as tedious here as in an old
believer's hermitage. This is harmful to the child. And without
him I am lonesome. I come home--it is empty. I can see nothing
there. It would not do for me to remove to your house for his
sake. I am not for him, he is for me. So. And now that my sister
has come to my house there will be somebody to look after him."

And the boy was brought to his father's house.

There he was met by a comical old woman, with a long, hook-like
nose and with a mouth devoid of teeth. Tall, stooping, dressed in
gray, with gray hair, covered by a black silk cap, she did not
please the boy at first; she even frightened him. But when he
noticed on the wrinkled face her black eyes, which beamed so
tenderly on him, he at once pressed his head close to her knees
in confidence.

"My sickly little orphan!" she said in a velvet-like voice that
trembled from the fulness of sound, and quietly patted his face
with her hand, "stay close to me, my dear child!"