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- CRIME AND PUNISHMENT 169
"This way, this way! We must take him upstairs head fore-
most. Turn round! I'll pay, I'll make it worth your while," hemuttered.
Katerina Ivanovna had just begun, as she always did at every
free moment, walking to and fro in her little room from window
to stove and back again, with her arms folded across her chest,
talking to herself and coughing. Of late she had begun to talk
more than ever to her eldest girl, Polenka, a child of ten, who,
though there was much she did not understand, understood very
well that her mother needed her, and so always watched her with
her big clever eyes and strove her utmost to appear to under-
stand. This time Polenka was undressing her little brother,
who had been unwell all day and was going to bed. The boy was
waiting for her to take off his shirt, which had to be washed at
night. He was sitting straight and motionless on a chair, with a
silent, serious face, with his legs stretched out straight before
him — heels together and toes turned out.
He was listening to what his mother was saying to his sister,
sitting perfectly still with pouting lips and wide-open eyes,
just as all good little boys have to sit when they are undressed
to go to bed. A little girl, still younger, dressed literally in rags,
stood at the screen, waiting for her turn. The door on to the
stairs was open to relieve them a little from the clouds of
tobacco smoke which floated in from the other rooms and
brought on long terrible fits of coughing in the poor, consump-
tive woman. Katerina Ivanovna seemed to have grown even
thinner during that week and the hectic flush on her face was
brighter than ever.
"You wouldn't believe, you can't imagine, Polenka," she said,
walking about the room, "what a happy luxurious life we had in
my papa's house and how this drunkard has brought me, and.
will bring you all, to ruin! Papa was a civil colonel and only a
step from being a governor; so that every one who came to see
him said, 'We look upon you, Ivan Mihailovitch, as our gover-
nor!' When I . . . when . . ." she coughed violently, "oh, cursed
life," she cried, clearing her throat and pressing her hands to her
breast, "when I . . . when at the last ball ... at the marshal's . . .
Princess Bezzemelny saw me — who gave me the blessing when
your father and I were married, Polenka — she asked at once
'Isn't that the pretty girl who danced the shawl dance at the
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