sleeve, and bring out of the depths of his pocket a coloured egg, to
offer it, panting and blinking, to his young masters or to the mistress
herself. He lived in summer in a little shed behind the chicken-house,
and in winter in the ante-room of the bathhouse; in the bitter frosts
he spent the night in the hayloft. The house-serfs had grown used to
seeing him; sometimes they gave him a kick, but no one ever addressed a
remark to him; as for him, he seems never to have opened his lips from
the time of his birth. After the conflagration, this forsaken creature
sought a refuge at the gardener Mitrofan's. The gardener left him
alone; he did not say 'Live with me,' but he did not drive him away.
And Styopushka did not live at the gardener's; his abode was the
garden. He moved and walked about quite noiselessly; he sneezed and
coughed behind his hand, not without apprehension; he was for ever busy
and going stealthily to and fro like an ant; and all to get food--
simply food to eat. And indeed, if he had not toiled from morning till
night for his living, our poor friend would certainly have died of
hunger. It's a sad lot not to know in the morning what you will find to
eat before night! Sometimes Styopushka sits under the hedge and gnaws a
radish or sucks a carrot, or shreds up some dirty cabbage-stalks; or he
drags a bucket of water along, for some object or other, groaning as he
goes; or he lights a fire under a small pot, and throws in some little
black scraps which he takes from out of the bosom of his coat; or he is
hammering in his little wooden den--driving in a nail, putting up a
shelf for bread. And all this he does silently, as though on the sly:
before you can look round, he's in hiding again. Sometimes he suddenly
disappears for a couple of days; but of course no one notices his
absence.... Then, lo and behold! he is there again, somewhere under the
hedge, stealthily kindling a fire of sticks under a kettle. He had a
small face, yellowish eyes, hair coming down to his eyebrows, a sharp
nose, large transparent ears, like a bat's, and a beard that looked as