back. The father was away every day
inspecting cattle, and sometimes was gone three whole days at a time,
so that Sasha, it seemed to Olenka, was utterly abandoned, was treated
as if he were quite superfluous, and must be dying of hunger. So she
transferred him into the wing along with herself and fixed up a little
room for him there.

Every morning Olenka would come into his room and find him sound
asleep with his hand tucked under his cheek, so quiet that he seemed
not to be breathing. What a shame to have to wake him, she thought.

"Sashenka," she said sorrowingly, "get up, darling. It's time to go to
the gymnasium."

He got up, dressed, said his prayers, then sat down to drink tea. He
drank three glasses of tea, ate two large cracknels and half a
buttered roll. The sleep was not yet out of him, so he was a little
cross.

"You don't know your fable as you should, Sashenka," said Olenka,
looking at him as though he were departing on a long journey. "What a
lot of trouble you are. You must try hard and learn, dear, and mind
your teachers."

"Oh, let me alone, please," said Sasha.

Then he went down the street to the gymnasium, a little fellow wearing
a large cap and carrying a satchel on his back. Olenka followed him
noiselessly.

"Sashenka," she called.

He looked round and she shoved a date or a caramel into his hand. When
he reached the street of the gymnasium, he turned around and said,
ashamed of being followed by a tall, stout woman:

"You had better go home, aunt. I can go the rest of the way myself."

She stopped and stared after him until he had disappeared into the
school entrance.

Oh, how she loved him! Not one of her other ties had been so deep.
Never before had she given herself so completely, so disinterestedly,
so cheerfully as now that her maternal instincts were all aroused. For
this boy, who was not hers, for the dimples in his cheeks and for his
big cap, she would have given her life, given it with joy and with
tears of rapture. Why? Ah, indeed, why?

When she had seen Sasha off to the gymnasium, she returned home
quietly, content, serene, overflowing with love. Her face, which had
grown younger in the last half year, smiled and beamed. People who met
her were pleased as they looked at her.

"How are you, Olga Semyonovna, darling? How are you getting on,
darling?"

"The gymnasium course is very hard nowadays," she told at the market.
"It's no joke. Yesterday the first class had