said this; her lips began to
tremble; she turned her face away and suddenly began to sob. In her
grief, she forgot the doctor's orders and cried:

"Oh! Katy! Katy! Our angel is gone from us! She is gone!"

She dropped her stocking and stooped down for it, and her cap fell off
her head. Klimov stared at her grey hair, could not understand, was
alarmed for Katy, and asked:

"But where is she, aunty?"

The old woman, who had already forgotten Klimov and remembered only her
grief, said:

"She caught typhus from you and ... and died. She was buried the day
before yesterday."

This sudden appalling piece of news came home to Klimov's mind, but
dreadful and shocking though it was it could not subdue the animal joy
which thrilled through the convalescent lieutenant. He cried, laughed,
and soon began to complain that he was given nothing to eat.

Only a week later, when, supported by Pavel, he walked in a
dressing-gown to the window, and saw the grey spring sky and heard the
horrible rattle of some old rails being carried by on a lorry, then his
heart ached with sorrow and he began to weep and pressed his forehead
against the window-frame.

"How unhappy I am!" he murmured. "My God, how unhappy I am!"

And joy gave way to his habitual weariness and a sense of his
irreparable loss.

GOOSEBERRIES

From early morning the sky had been overcast with clouds; the day was
still, cool, and wearisome, as usual on grey, dull days when the clouds
hang low over the fields and it looks like rain, which never comes. Ivan
Ivanich, the veterinary surgeon, and Bourkin, the schoolmaster, were
tired of walking and the fields seemed endless to them. Far ahead they
could just see the windmills of the village of Mirousky, to the right
stretched away to disappear behind the village a line of hills, and they
knew that it was the bank of the river; meadows, green willows,
farmhouses; and from one of the hills there could be seen a field as
endless, telegraph-posts, and the train, looking from a distance like a
crawling caterpillar, and in clear weather even the town. In the calm
weather when all Nature seemed gentle and melancholy, Ivan Ivanich and
Bourkin were filled with love for the fields and thought how grand and
beautiful the country was.

"Last time, when we stopped in Prokofyi's shed," said Bourkin, "you were
going to tell me a story."

"Yes. I wanted to tell you about my brother."

Ivan Ivanich took a deep breath and