Page:Sologub Sweet Scented Name.djvu/91

 Grishka, the name everybody called him by—his mother, her mistress, the young ladies, and every one in the yard,—seemed altogether foreign, altogether unsuitable to what he thought himself. It seemed to him sometimes that it would drop from him, as a badly stuck-on label comes off a wine-bottle.

Anushka wanted to put a dish on the window-seat. She seized Grishka's thin ankles in her large rough hand and dragged him down, saying in a needlessly rough way:

"You sprawl about everywhere. And even without you there's not enough room, no place to stand anything."

Grishka sprang away. He looked with frightened eyes at the stern, lean face of his mother, red from the heat of the kitchen stove, and at her red arms, bare to the elbow. It was stifling in the kitchen; something was smoking and spluttering on the stove; there was a bitter smell and a smell of burning. The door on to the outer stairway was open. Grishka stood at the door, then, seeing his mother busy at the stove and