“Haven’t I a pretty darling? If it weren’t for him, I’d have drowned myself long ago, I swear. I’d have strangled myself.”

She said this with a smile.

Suddenly Lenka asked me:

“Are you a fool?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Mammy says you’re a fool.”

“But why do I say it?” the woman exclaimed, undaunted. “He brings a drunken woman in from the street, puts her to bed, and goes off, there you have it. I didn’t mean any harm. And you, you have to tell on me. Oh, you’re mean!”

She too spoke like a child. Her manner of speech was that of a girl in her teens. And her eyes too had a girlish purity, which made her face, with its stump of a nose, its drawn lip and bared teeth, look all the more hideous. Her face showed a constant nightmarish sneer, but it was a jolly sneer.

“Well, let’s have tea,” she offered solemnly.

The samovar stood on a box beside Lenka. A roguish jet of steam coming out from under the battered lid touched his shoulder. He put his little hand against it and when his palm grew moist, wiped it on his hair, screwing up his eyes dreamily.

“When I grow up,” he said, “Mammy will make me a carriage. I’ll crawl in the streets and beg alms. When they’ve given me enough, I’ll crawl out into the green fields.”

“Ho-ho!” sighed his mother, and directly after, laughed gently. “The country’s paradise to him, the darling. But what do you find in the country? Camps, and beastly soldiers, and drunken peasants.”

“You’re lying,” Lenka stopped her, frowning. “Ask him what the country’s like: he’s seen it.”

“And I—haven’t I seen it?”

“Yes, when you were drunk.”

They began to argue just like children, with as much heat and lack of logic. Meanwhile the warm evening had invaded the court-yard, a thick, dove-colored cloud hung motionless in the reddened sky. It was getting dark in the cellar.

The boy drank a cup of tea, began to perspire, looked at me and at his mother, and said:

“I’ve eaten, I’ve drunk, now, by God, I’m sleepy.”

“Go to sleep,” his mother advised him.

“And he—he’ll go. Will you go?”

“Don’t worry, I won’t let him go,” the woman said, nudging me with her knee.

“Don’t you go,” Lenka begged, closed his eyes, and, stretching cozily, sank into the box. Then suddenly he lifted his head and said to his mother reproachfully: