Page 874 - the-brothers-karamazov

Chapter 2

Children

ND so on that frosty, snowy, and windy day in No-
Avember, Kolya Krassotkin was sitting at home. It was
Sunday and there was no school. It had just struck eleven,
and he particularly wanted to go out ‘on very urgent busi-
ness,’ but he was left alone in charge of the house, for it so
happened that all its elder inmates were absent owing to
a sudden and singular event. Madame Krassotkin had let
two little rooms, separated from the rest of the house by
a passage, to a doctor’s wife with her two small children.
This lady was the same age as Anna Fyodorovna, and a great
friend of hers. Her husband, the doctor, had taken his de-
parture twelve months before, going first to Orenburg and
then to Tashkend, and for the last six months she had not
heard a word from him. Had it not been for her friendship
with Madame Krassotkin, which was some consolation to
the forsaken lady, she would certainly have completely dis-
solved away in tears. And now, to add to her misfortunes,
Katerina, her only servant, was suddenly moved the eve-
ning before to announce, to her mistress’s amazement, that
she proposed to bring a child into the world before morn-