Pelageya’s face worked all over and she began blubbering. . . .

The soldier took a big loaf from the table, stood beside nurse, and began blessing the couple.  The cabman went up to the soldier, flopped down on his knees, and gave a smacking kiss on his hand.  He did the same before nurse.  Pelageya followed him mechanically, and she too bowed down to the ground.  At last the outer door was opened, there was a whiff of white mist, and the whole party flocked noisily out of the kitchen into the yard.

“Poor thing, poor thing,” thought Grisha, hearing the sobs of the cook.  “Where have they taken her?  Why don’t papa and mamma protect her?”

After the wedding there was singing and concertina-playing in the laundry till late evening.  Mamma was cross all the evening because nurse smelt of vodka, and owing to the wedding there was no one to heat the samovar.  Pelageya had not come back by the time Grisha went to bed.

“The poor thing is crying somewhere in the dark!” he thought.  “While the cabman is saying to her ‘shut up!’”

Next morning the cook was in the kitchen again.  The cabman came in for a minute.  He thanked mamma, and glancing sternly at Pelageya, said: 

“Will you look after her, madam?  Be a father and a mother to her.  And you, too, Aksinya Stepanovna, do not forsake her, see that everything is as it should be . . . without any nonsense. . . .  And also, madam, if you would kindly advance me five roubles of her wages.  I have got to buy a new horse-collar.”

Again a problem for Grisha:  Pelageya was living in freedom, doing as she liked, and not having to account to anyone for her actions, and all at once, for no sort of reason, a stranger turns up, who has somehow acquired rights over her conduct and her property!  Grisha was distressed.  He longed passionately, almost to tears, to comfort this victim, as he supposed, of man’s injustice.  Picking out the very biggest apple in the store-room he stole into the kitchen, slipped it into Pelageya’s hand, and darted headlong away.

SLEEPY

Night.  Varka, the little nurse, a girl of thirteen, is rocking the cradle in which the baby is lying, and humming hardly audibly: 

“Hush-a-bye, my baby wee,
While I sing a song for thee.”

A little green lamp is burning before the ikon; there is a string stretched from one end of the room to the other, on which baby-clothes and a pair of big black trousers are hanging.  There is a big patch of green on the ceiling from the ikon lamp, and the baby-clothes and the trousers throw long shadows on the stove, on the cradle, and on Varka. . . .  When the lamp begins to flicker, the green patch and the shadows come to life, and are set in motion, as though by the wind.  It is stuffy.  There is a smell of cabbage soup, and of the inside of a boot-shop.

The baby’s crying.  For a long while he has been hoarse and exhausted with crying; but he still goes on screaming, and there is no knowing when he will stop.  And Varka is sleepy.  Her eyes are glued together, her head droops, her neck aches.  She cannot move her eyelids or her lips, and she feels as though her face is dried and wooden, as though her head has become as small as the head of a pin.