Pavel smilingly turned to her:
"Oh, you'll get into prison, mother!"
"I don't mind," she murmured.
The sun rose higher, pouring warmth into the bracing freshness of
the spring day. The clouds floated more slowly, their shadows grew
thinner and more transparent, and crawled gently over the streets
and roofs. The bright sunlight seemed to clean the village, to wipe
the dust and dirt from the walls and the tedium from the faces.
Everything assumed a more cheerful aspect; the voices sounded louder,
drowning the far-off rumble and heavings of the factory machines.
Again, from all sides, from the windows and the yards, different
words and voices, now uneasy and malicious, now thoughtful and gay,
found their way to the mother's ears. But this time she felt a
desire to retort, to thank, to explain, to participate in the
strangely variegated life of the day.
Off a corner of the main thoroughfare, in a narrow by-street, a
crowd of about a hundred people had gathered, and from its depths
resounded Vyesovshchikov's voice:
"They squeeze our blood like juice from huckleberries." His words
fell like hammer blows on the people.
"That's true!" the resonant cry rang out simultaneously from a
number of throats.
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