Page:Chernyshevsky.whatistobedone.djvu/34

14 find out by the register who has been staying with me. Mrs. Savastyánova, the wife of a merchant of Pskof, and a friend of mine has been here, and that's all there is of it."

Finally, after using his whole battery of words, the civilian departed, and never appeared again. Viérotchka witnessed this when she was eight years old, and when she was nine years old, Matrióna explained to her what the occurrence really was. However, such an occurrence happened only once; there were various others, but nothing like this.

When Viérotchka was a little girl of ten years old, as she was going one day with her mother to the Tolkutchy (Pushing) Market, and was turning from Gorokhovaïa (Bean) Street to Sadovaïa (Garden) Street, she received an unexpected slap on the head, with the words: "What are you looking at the church for, you fool, without crossing yourself? What! don't you see that all good people make the sign of the cross?"

When Viérotchka was twelve years old she began to go to school, and a piano-teacher came to give her lessons, a German who was a drunkard, but was otherwise a very good man and an excellent musician. Owing to his habits his terms were very low.

When she was fourteen years old she used to sew for the whole family; the family, however, was not large.

When Viérotchka was going on to her sixteenth year, her mother began to scold her in this way: "Wash your face, 'tis like a gypsy's. You could not get it clean, if you tried; you're such a scarecrow. I'd like to know whose child you are, anyhow."

She was always ridiculed on account of the tawny complexion of her face, and she got accustomed to look upon herself as extremely ugly. Hitherto her mother had dressed her almost in rags, but now she began to give her fine clothes. And Viérotchka used to go to church in her fine clothes with her mother, and say to herself: "These fine clothes would suit somebody else; but no matter how I'm dressed, I'm always a gypsy, a scarecrow. I might as well be in calico as in silk, but it is good to be pretty. How I should like to be pretty!"

When Viérotchka had completed her sixteenth year she stopped taking piano lessons, and no longer went to school, but began to teach in the very same school: afterwards her mother got other teaching for her.

At the end of six months her mother ceased calling her