Chapter
13
Rybin came in, greeted her, and stroking his beard in a dignified manner and peeping into the room with his dark eyes, remarked:
"You used to let people into your house before, without inquiring who they were. Are you alone?"
"Yes."
"You are? I thought the Little Russian was here. I saw him to-day. The prison doesn't spoil a man. Stupidity, that's what spoils most of all."
He walked into the room, sat down and said to the mother:
"Let's have a talk together. I have something to tell you. I have a theory!" There was a significant and mysterious expression in his face as he said this. It filled the mother with a sense of foreboding. She sat down opposite him and waited in mute anxiety for him to speak.
"Everything costs money!" he began in his gruff, heavy voice. "It takes
