"It is, there is not a doubt it is," the painters would agree.

"I don't think it is a rain-cloud, though. Perhaps it won't rain
after all."

"No, it won't, your honour! I am sure it won't."

But their attitude to their patrons behind their backs was usually
one of irony, and when they saw, for instance, a gentleman sitting
in the verandah reading a newspaper, they would observe:

"He reads the paper, but I daresay he has nothing to eat."

I never went home to see my own people. When I came back from work
I often found waiting for me little notes, brief and anxious, in
which my sister wrote to me about my father; that he had been
particularly preoccupied at dinner and had eaten nothing, or that
he had been giddy and staggering, or that he had locked himself in
his room and had not come out for a long time. Such items of news
troubled me; I could not sleep, and at times even walked up and
down Great Dvoryansky Street at night by our house, looking in at
the dark windows and trying to guess whether everything was well
at home. On Sundays my sister came to see me, but came in secret,
as though it were not to see me but our nurse. And if she came in
to see me she was very pale, with tear-stained eyes, and she began
crying at once.

"Our father will never live through this," she would say. "If
anything should happen to him--God grant it may not--your
conscience will torment you all your life. It's awful, Misail; for