“Well, I earn a little. How I used to dislike music, but how useful it is to me now!” Her small hand lay on the chest of drawers beside which she was sitting, and she drummed an exercise with her thin fingers.

“How much do you get for a lesson?”

“Sometimes a ruble, sometimes fifty kopecks, or sometimes thirty. 300 They are all so kind to me.”

“And do your pupils get on well?” asked Kasátsky with a slight smile.

Praskóvya Mikháylovna did not at first believe that he was asking seriously, and looked inquiringly into his eyes.