介绍:
CHAPTER V.
MASLOVA’S AUNT.
Nekhludoff felt more at ease with the boys than with the grown-up people, and he began talking to them as they went along. The little one with the pink shirt stopped laughing, and spoke as sensibly and as exactly as the elder one.
“Can you tell me who are the poorest people you have got here?” asked Nekhludoff.
“The poorest? Michael is poor, Simon Makhroff, and Martha, she is very poor.”
“And Anisia, she is still poorer; she’s not even got a cow. They go begging,” said little Fedka.
“She’s not got a cow, but they are only three persons, and Martha’s family are five,” objected the elder boy.
“But the other’s a widow,” the pink boy said, standing up for Anisia.
“You say Anisia is a widow, and Martha is no better than a widow,” said the elder boy; “she’s also no husband.”
“And where is her husband?” Nekhludoff asked.
“Feeding vermin(害虫/虱子) in prison,” said the elder boy, using this expression, common among the peasants.
“A year ago he cut down two birch trees in the land-lord’s forest,” the little pink boy hurried to say, “so he was locked up; now he’s sitting the sixth month there, and the wife goes begging. There are three children and a sick grandmother,” he went on with his detailed account.
“And where does she live?” Nekhludoff asked.
“In this very house,” answered the boy, pointing to a hut, in front of which, on the footpath along which Nekhludoff was walking, a tiny, flaxen-headed infant stood balancing himself with difficulty on his rickety legs.
“Vaska! Where’s the little scamp（淘气鬼;捣乱鬼） got to?” shouted a woman, with a dirty grey blouse, and a frightened look, as she ran out of the house, and, rushing forward, seized the baby before Nekhludoff came up to it, and carried it in, just as if she were afraid that Nekhludoff would hurt her child.
This was the woman whose husband was imprisoned for Nekhludoff’s birch trees.
“Well, and this Matrona, is she also poor?” Nekhludoff asked, as they came up to Matrona’s house.
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