The lad suddenly gave a jerk in the opposite direction and sent the button far out into the snow. For a moment everybody was silent. What in the world …! Was the lad human? The young woman was the first to laugh. She put a dress hook into the bowl and saw it, too, land far away. Then everybody laughed. But the little girl went down on her knees in the snow to search for her bright button, which had been so disdained.

Then things got out of hand. One after another, the onlookers placed worthless things in the bowl: nails, pebbles, wood shavings. Finally the beggar lad grew weary of this; he shook the bowl unceasingly so that nothing could remain in it. Was he then the only one of them all with any sense?

The musician stopped playing, shut the lid, and unscrewed the barrel organ. He sighed heavily.

“Why are you with him?” asked Edevart darkly.

The musician explained as well as he could: they owned the barrel organ between them, but his partner was bad. Look, once he’d stabbed him in the eye with his knife. The musician never dared show Napoleon and the other figures when his partner was around. The man was so hot-tempered he would smash the entire theater.

“Where are you from?” asked Edevart.

He was from Armenia.

“Where is that?”

Far away. Past all other lands. Gewiss. Across many mountains and a great sea. A year’s journey …

“Come in and have something to eat,” said the young woman.

They followed him in, as many as the room would hold; the rest stood outside and looked in through the windows. There wasn’t a great deal to the man; he merely sat inviting sympathy, hanging his head. They watched him say grace and eat herring and potatoes, after which he had some barley gruel. Then he said grace again and started to get up and say his thanks.

The young woman said: “If I’d had any coffee, you’d have had a cup.”

“I’m not entirely out of it,” said another woman helpfully.

“Well, then, you can loan me a spoonful.”

All was well as long as the man sat there. The women combined to find ways of holding him there and of keeping him away from his inhuman partner.

“Which way did he go?” they asked.

Nobody knew. The man didn’t know, so he said.

“Perhaps he’s gone for good?”

“Oh, no!” The man shook his head and sighed. He began moving his feet and knocking his frozen boots together.

They asked him if his feet were cold. They were. Then they asked him about his stockings. Yes, he had holes in his stockings, many holes, big ones.

They looked at each other and nodded; and again the better-off young woman went and brought out a pair of new stockings, knee-length, and gave them to him. And they had a blue border around the tops. Lovely stockings.

“Oh, Ane Maria, there you go again!” the other women murmured admiringly.

“Put them on!” said Ane Maria.

The man didn’t want to. No, he behaved as though he hadn’t the heart to spoil the stockings. He held them to his cheek, then tucked them inside his shirtfront.