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 a fable to learn by
heart, a Latin translation, and a problem. How is a little fellow to
do all that?"
And she spoke of the teacher and the lessons and the text-books,
repeating exactly what Sasha said about them.
At three o'clock they had dinner. In the evening they prepared the
lessons together, and Olenka wept with Sasha over the difficulties.
When she put him to bed, she lingered a long time making the sign of
the cross over him and muttering a prayer. And when she lay in bed,
she dreamed of the far-away, misty future when Sasha would finish his
studies and become a doctor or an engineer, have a large house of his
own, with horses and a carriage, marry and have children.
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