meat, too, quickly vanished. There
was nothing left but the piece of bread. Plain bread without anything
on it was not appetising, but there was no help for it. Pashka
thought a little, and ate the bread. At that moment the nurse came
in with another bowl. This time there was roast meat with potatoes
in the bowl.

"And where is the bread?" asked the nurse.

Instead of answering, Pashka puffed out his cheeks, and blew out
the air.

"Why did you gobble it all up?" said the nurse reproachfully. "What
are you going to eat your meat with?"

She went and fetched another piece of bread. Pashka had never eaten
roast meat in his life, and trying it now found it very nice. It
vanished quickly, and then he had a piece of bread left bigger than
the first. When the old man had finished his dinner, he put away
the remains of his bread in a little table. Pashka meant to do the
same, but on second thoughts ate his piece.

When he had finished he went for a walk. In the next ward, besides
the two he had seen from the door, there were four other people.
Of these only one drew his attention. This was a tall, extremely
emaciated peasant with a morose-looking, hairy face. He was sitting
on the bed, nodding his head and swinging his right arm all the
time like a pendulum. Pashka could not take his eyes off him for a
long time. At first the man's regular pendulum-like movements seemed
to him curious, and he thought they were done for the general
amusement, but when he looked into the man's face he felt frightened,
and realised that he was terribly ill. Going into a third ward he
saw two peasants with dark red faces as though they were smeared
with clay. They were sitting motionless on their beds, and with
their strange faces, in which it was hard to distinguish their
features, they looked like heathen idols.

"Auntie, why do they look like that?" Pashka asked the nurse.

"They have got smallpox, little lad."

Going back to his own ward, Pashka sat down on his bed and began
waiting for the doctor to come and take him to catch finches, or
to go to the fair. But the doctor did not come. He got a passing
glimpse of a hospital assistant at the door of the next ward. He
bent over the patient on whose head lay a bag of ice, and cried:
"Mihailo!"

But the sleeping man did not stir. The assistant made a gesture and
went away. Pashka scrutinised the old man, his next neighbour. The
old man coughed without ceasing and spat into a mug. His