Chapter XIII

During this time that Jurgis was looking for work oc~
curred the death of little Kristoforas, one of the children
of Teta Elzbieta. Both Kristoforas and his brother,
Juozapas, were cripples, the latter having lost one leg by
having it run over, and Kristoforas having congenital dis~
location of the hip, which made it impossible for him ever
to walk. He was the last of Teta Elzbieta's children, and
perhaps he had been intended by nature to let her know
that she had had enough. At any rate he was wretchedly
sick and undersized; he had the rickets, and though he
was over three years old, he was no bigger than an ordi~
nary child of one. All day long he would crawl around the
floor in a filthy little dress, whining and fretting; because
the floor was full of draughts he was always catching cold,
and snuffling because his nose ran. This made him a
nuisance, and a source of endless trouble in the family.
For his mother, with unnatural perversity, loved him best
of all her children, and made a perpetual fuss over him --
would let him do anything undisturbed, and would burst
into tears when his fretting drove Jurgis wild.

And now he died. Perhaps it was the smoked sausage
he had eaten that morning -- which may have been made
out of some of the tubercular pork that was condemned as
unfit for export. At any rate, an hour after eating it, the
child had begun to cry with pain, and in another hour he
was rolling about on the floor in convulsions. Little
Kotrina, who was all alone with him, ran out screaming
for help, and after a while a doctor came, but not until
Kristoforas had howled his last howl. No one was really
sorry about this except poor Elzbieta, who was inconsol~
able. Jurgis announced that so far as he was concerned

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v?