1. Misbehaviour

A young reddish dog, a cross between a dachshund and a mongrel, very like a fox in the face, was running up and down the pavement looking uneasily from side to side. From time to time she stopped, and, whining and lifting first one chilled paw and then another, tried to make up her mind how it could have happened that she was lost.

She remembered very well how she had spent the day, and how, in the end, she had found herself on this unfamiliar pavement.

The day had begun by her master, Luka Alexandrych, a carpenter, putting on his cap, taking some wooden article wrapped up in a red handkerchief under his arm, and calling: "Kashtanka, come along!"

Hearing her name, the cross between a dachshund and a mongrel came out from under the work-bench, where she slept on the shavings, stretched herself luxuriously and ran after her master. The people Luka Alexandrych worked for lived a very long way off, so that, before he could get to any one of them, the carpenter had several times to step into a tavern to fortify himself. Kashtanka remembered that on the way she had behaved extremely improperly. In her delight that she was being taken for a walk she jumped about, dashed barking after the trams, ran into yards, and chased other dogs. The carpenter was continually losing sight of her, stopping, and angrily shouting at her. Once he had even, with an expression of fury in his face, taken her fox-like ear in his fist, smacked her, and said emphatically: "Pla-a-ague take you, you pest!"

Kashtanka's home was not a gentle one: the carpenter's little son Fedyushka loved to tease her with a piece of meat on a string. She remembers it without resentment, as a dog would.

Having left the work where it had been ordered, Luka Alexandrych went into his sister's and there had something to eat and drink; from his sister's he had gone to see a bookbinder he knew; from the bookbinder's to a tavern, from the tavern to another crony's, and so on. In short, by the time Kashtanka found herself on the unfamiliar pavement, it was getting dusk, and the carpenter was as drunk as a cobbler. He was waving his arms and, breathing heavily, muttered: "In sin my mother bore me! Ah, sins, sins! Here now we are walking along the street and looking at the street lamps, but when we die, we shall burn in a fiery Gehenna . . ."

Or he fell into a good-natured tone, called Kashtanka to him, and said to her: "You, Kashtanka, are an insect of a creature, and nothing else. Beside a man, you are much the same as a joiner beside a cabinet-maker . . ."

While he talked to her in that way, there was suddenly a burst of music. Kashtanka looked round and saw that a regiment of soldiers was coming straight towards her. Unable to endure the music, which unhinged her nerves, she turned round and round and wailed. To her great surprise, the carpenter, instead of being frightened, whining and barking, gave a broad grin, drew himself up to attention, and saluted with all his five fingers. Seeing that her master did not protest, Kashtanka whined louder than ever, and dashed across the road to the opposite pavement.

When she recovered herself, the band was not playing and the regiment was no longer there. She ran across the road to the spot where she had left her master, but alas, the carpenter was no longer there. She dashed forward, then back again and ran across the road once more, but the carpenter seemed to have vanished into the earth. Kashtanka began sniffing the pavement, hoping to find her master by the scent of his tracks, but some wretch had been that way just before in new rubber goloshes, and now all delicate scents were mixed with an acute stench of india-rubber, so that it was impossible to make out anything.

Meanwhile it was getting dark. The lamps were lighted on both sides of the street, and lights appeared in the windows. Big, fluffy snowflakes were falling and painting white the pavement, the horses' backs and the cabmen's caps; and the darker the evening grew, the whiter were all these objects. Unknown customers kept walking incessantly to and fro, obstructing her field of vision and shoving against her with their feet.

When it got quite dark, Kashtanka was overcome by despair and horror. She huddled up in an entrance and began whining piteously. The long day's journeying with Luka Alexandrych had exhausted her, her ears and her paws were freezing, and, what was more, she was terribly hungry. And so, lying in the entrance, she wondered what would happen to her now.

Suddenly the door clicked, and something struck her on the side. She jumped up. A man belonging to the class of customers had come out of the door. As Kashtanka had whined and got under his feet, he could not help noticing her. He bent down to her and asked: "Doggy, where do you come from? Did I hurt you? O, poor thing, poor thing . . . Come, don't be cross, don't be cross . . ."

Kashtanka looked at the stranger through the snowflakes that hung on her eyelashes, and saw before her a short, fat little man, with a plump, shaven face, wearing a top hat and a fur coat that swung open.

"What are you whining for?" he went on, knocking the snow off her back with his fingers. "Where is your master? I suppose you are lost? Ah, poor doggy! What are we going to do now?"

Catching in the stranger's voice a warm, cordial note, Kashtanka licked his hand, and whined still more pitifully.

"Oh, you nice, funny thing!" said the stranger. "A regular fox! Well, there's nothing for it, you must come along with me! Perhaps you will be of use for something . . . Come along!"

He clicked with his lips, and made a sign to Kashtanka with his hand, which could only mean one thing: "Come along!" Kashtanka went.