succour us!' whenever she saw his fingers stained with iodine.

Yakov, as we have already related, had held aloof from his fellow-students;
with one of them he had, however, become fairly intimate, and saw him
frequently, even after the fellow-student had left the university and
entered the service, in a position involving little responsibility. He had,
in his own words, got on to the building of the Church of our Saviour,
though, of course, he knew nothing whatever of architecture. Strange to
say, this one solitary friend of Aratov's, by name Kupfer, a German, so far
Russianised that he did not know one word of German, and even fell foul
of 'the Germans,' this friend had apparently nothing in common with him.
He was a black-haired, red-cheeked young man, very jovial, talkative, and
devoted to the feminine society Aratov so assiduously avoided. It is true
Kupfer both lunched and dined with him pretty often, and even, being a
man of small means, used to borrow trifling sums of him; but this was not
what induced the free and easy German to frequent the humble little house
in Shabolovka so diligently. The spiritual purity, the idealism of Yakov
pleased him, possibly as a contrast to what he was seeing and meeting every
day; or possibly this very attachment to the youthful idealist betrayed him
of German blood after all. Yakov liked Kupfer's simple-hearted frankness;
and besides that, his accounts of the theatres, concerts, and balls, where
he was always in attendance--of the unknown world altogether, into which
Yakov could not make up his mind to enter--secretly interested and even
excited the young hermit, without, however, arousing any desire to learn
all this by his own experience. And Platosha made Kupfer welcome; it is
true she thought him at times excessively unceremonious, but instinctively
perceiving and realising that he was sincerely attached to her precious
Yasha, she not only put up with the noisy guest, but felt kindly towards
him.