even more wretchedly than before; how my father came back, and I should not have known him if he had not asked if Matriona did not live there—this was regarding his wife—and how then we rejoiced and we began to live well."
This was all I said to begin with. This theme completely charmed Fedka. He instantly seized a pen and paper and began to write. While he was writing I only suggested to him the idea of the sister, and of the mother's death. All the rest he himself wrote, and did not even show it to me, except the first chapter, until it was all finished.
When he showed me the first chapter, and I began to read it, I felt that he was in a state of intense emotion, and holding his breath. He looked now at the manuscript, following my reading, now into my face, trying to detect in it an expression of satisfaction or dissatisfaction.
When I told him that it was very good he reddened with delight, but he said nothing to me and with an eagerly light step he went with his note-book to the table, laid it down, and slowly went outdoors.
Outdoors, that day, he was wildly frolicsome with the other children, and when our eyes met he looked at me with such a grateful, affectionate expression! At the end of the day he had already forgotten what he had written. I only invented the title, suggested the chapter divisions, and here and there corrected mistakes made by him merely through inadvertence. This story in its primitive form is printed in a pamphlet under the title, Soldatkino Zhityo, "Life in a Soldier's Home."
I will not speak of the first chapter, although it is marked by its own inimitable beauties, and though the careless Gordyeï is presented in it with thorough life-likeness and vivacity,—Gordyeï, who seems to be ashamed of acknowledging his remorse, and considers it decorous only to ask the assembly about his son,—in spite of this, this chapter is incomparably feebler than all the succeeding ones; and I was the only one to blame
