“Polenka,” cried Katerina Ivanovna, “run to Sonia, make haste. If you don’t find her at home, leave word that her father has been run over and that she is to come here at once⁠ ⁠… when she comes in. Run, Polenka! there, put on the shawl.”

“Run your fastest!” cried the little boy on the chair suddenly, after which he relapsed into the same dumb rigidity, with round eyes, his heels thrust forward and his toes spread out.

Meanwhile the room had become so full of people that you couldn’t have dropped a pin. The policemen left, all except one, who remained for a time, trying to drive out the people who came in from the stairs. Almost all Madame Lippevechsel’s lodgers had streamed in from the inner rooms of the flat; at first they were squeezed together in the doorway, but afterwards they overflowed into the room. Katerina Ivanovna flew into a fury.