“The lamp—shall I put it out?”

“What for?”

He did not answer. While I was handling his mother like a sack of flour, I was watching him. He sat on the floor in a box made of heavy boards on which there was an inscription in black letters: “Handle with care. N.R. and Co.” The sill of the square window was flush with the boy’s shoulder. Against the wall there were several narrow shelves, on which cigarette and match-boxes were piled. Next to the box in which the boy sat there was another one, covered with yellow paper, which apparently served as a table. His funny pitiful hands behind his neck, the boy was looking up at the dark windowpanes.

Having undressed the woman, I threw her wet clothes on the stove. I washed my hands in the earthenware washbasin in the corner, and wiping them on a handkerchief, I said to the child:

“Well, now, good-by.”

He looked at me, and, speaking with a slight lisp, asked:

“Now shall I put out the lamp?”

“If you like.”

“And you—are you going away? Aren’t you going to bed?”

With his little hand he pointed to his mother:

“With her.”

“What for?” I asked stupidly, surprised.

“You know, yourself,” he said with terrible simplicity, and, stretching himself, added:

“They all do it.”

Abashed, I looked about me. To the right, there was the mouth of an ugly stove, on the hearth were dirty dishes, in the corner behind the box—pieces of tarred rope and a pile of picked oakum, logs of firewood, kindling, and a yoke for carrying pails of water. At my feet stretched a snoring yellow form.

“May I sit with you awhile?” I asked the boy.

He looked at me from under his brows.

“But she won’t wake up till morning.”

“But I don’t need her.”

Squatting beside his box, I told him how I had come across his mother, trying to present the matter in a comic light:

“She was sitting in the mud, paddling with her hands and singing.…”

He nodded his head, smiling a pale smile and scratching his narrow chest.

“She was drunk, that’s why. Even when she’s sober, she likes to carry on. Just like a child.…”

Now I was able to see his eyes clearly. His eyelashes were astonishingly long, and his eyelids too were thickly covered with beautifully curved little hairs. The blueish shadows under his eyes added to the